This thread again?
Yep, I am making that thread again. I have been thrilled about the idea of NPC villages ever since Notch mentioned them for the first time a while back. Now before any of you begin with the "Minecraft is supposed to feel isolated!" argument, think of it like this: expansion pack! Notch also mentioned expansion packs after Minecraft's official release at some point. I feel this can satisfy the anti-village and pro-village players.
I guess it sounds okay. What will be in the pack?
An ass-load of things! Notch could handle the pack idea like Will Wright did and create a sort of monopoly off of the idea. I'm going to try not to go too far into the idea of expansion packs and stick to the main topic. The pack will contain an almost entirely new game.
Pigmen - They build their houses out of wood and logs. The average pigman villages contains anywhere from three to twelve houses. Found in each house is a workbench, bed, and chest. Wait, what? No furnace? Well, allow me to explain kind sir or ma'am. The pigmen are Minecraft's (sort of) equivalent to the elves in Dwarf Fortress, which is much like Minecraft to begin with. The pigmen do not like to defile the land (Swampy awaaay!) thus will only build their homes out of wood since it is essential. Within each of their chests you may find a number of objects, such as wood, bookcases, books, wooden planks, bread, wheat, saplings, mushrooms, and flowers. Pigmen as a whole are pacifists, and will not attack you if you steal from these chests. Though, if you do happen to commit a crime such as murder or thievery, the civilian pigmen will flee and the town guards will attack you with wooden swords while wearing leather armor. If you kill all the guards, the town's pigmen will hide and show no attempt to stop you from pillaging their homes. If you do not wish to cause a tribal war, you can trade. For every item you remove from the chest you have the option of depositing a set amount of ore. Seven coal, four gold ingots, three ingots, or one diamond is the charge for each object you take from the chest. Civilian pigmen normally wield sticks, saddles, torches, and flowers. Some towns may have farms or reeds growing nearby to add to their nature-loving atmosphere. They two exclusive items called the greenbow/greenarrows and a special gem called dirtite. The greenbow is a special bow that fires greenarrows. This weapon spawns a cactus on an adjacent square next to the target it hits. This bow can only be found in pigmen chests. Dirtite is a green gem with swirls of brown in it that can be used to craft more greenarrows. Simply replace the flint with dirtite in the arrow recipe and you get four greenarrows!
Spiderites ("Spidermen" is copyright infringement!) - Spiderites are four-legged, four-armed creatures that live in caves around layer thirty. Instead of building houses, they have little grottos placed to the side of a central walkway. Along the walkway are about six homes. Each house will contain no bed, two furnaces, workbench, and a double chest. There may occasionally be some coal or wood in each furnace that you are allowed to take without harassment. Inside chests there can be mushrooms, ores of all types, tools, TNT, and armor. In order to remove something from the chest you must either supply the spiderites with ten logs, five iron, or a diamond, nothing else will be accepted. Since spiderites are a neutral species, any of the civilians nearby will attack you if you steal or murder. The average spiderite wields a pickaxe in one arm, and a sword in the other. Most of them will have on iron armor, and some may wear leather, but this is very rare as they seldom go to the surface. Since spiderites rarely go to the surface they light their homes with redstone torches to keep the visibility level dim. If you break a redstone torch they will swat you with whatever they have on hand, and then leave you alone. They have one exclusive item called superstring. Superstring is obtained in groups of two when a spiderite is killed. If you place two superstrings vertically on a crafting table, with flint positioned above the two superstring you get climbing rope! You can place climbing rope on a block and it will then allow you to descend down ten vertical blocks, replacing ladders effectively, with the only con being that it disintegrate after ten uses. Yeah, I guess that sort of defeats the idea of superstring, but nothing can ever have infinite uses you know!
Ironmen - Fight crime but are always drunk. Drops the Eyelander.
Houndmen - I scrapped the idea of goblins to keep Minecraft's originality in tune with pigmen and spiderites. Hound men live on top of mountains, with the average villages consisting of three to nine homes. They build their houses out of cobblestone and smoothstone, and keep each house in the shape of a box with no windows. A houndman will stare at you if you are twenty to ten blocks aay, and attack if you get closer than ten blocks. So yeah, they are naturally aggressive but hard to find. They wear leather armor at all times, and commonly hold axes or swords made of stone. Their homes contain beds, workbenches, a furnace, and a chest. Each house has more workbenches than furnace since they don't dig underground due to being so high up. Their chests contain coal, smoothstone (Oh yeah!), wood and stone tools, glass, cooked porkchop, wooden planks, bones, feathers, little gunpowder, and leather. The only way to get these items is to sneak into their house without any houdnmen seeing you, or kill off the entire village. Houndmen resemble wolves, but with a darker shade of gray, and walk upright on two legs with two arms. Though they do walk upright, they have broad shoulders and hunch over just a little bit. Houndmen have two exclusive items, the houndman claw and fur pelt. The houndman claw can be made into a sword by placing two claws in the same spot you would for a normal sword. The claw sword does as much damage as a diamond sword, but has as many uses as a wooden sword. The fur pelt can be made into armor that is as strong as iron armor but lasts as long as leather armor.
I'm glad you've got all the eye-candy done ... but what about the technical side?
This isn't too complex. The world generator may occasionally create an NPC village, but it has restrictions to assure they are rare. For starters, there is a limit of one village per eighty chunks, no matter what species it is. In addition, there is always the possibility that a village won't even spawn at all. You may be wondering how the world generator decides where to place a village. I've got that figure out too. Pigmen villages will only spawn in rainforest, taiga, forest, swamp, and seasonal forest biomes. If the generator finds a spot that is one of those biomes and is not within eighty chunks of another village, it will flatten a reasonable amount of land, place a village using pre-defined buildings, fill the chests with random objects restricted to the NPC, then done. For houndmen, the generator looks for a mountain in the taiga and tundra biomes, widens it, flattens a portion of the top, and plops down a houndman village. Spiderite villages are the toughest since they only spawn in caves. The biome does not matter, just as long there is a cave and no villages too close, the cave will be widened and a spiderite town will be placed there. In order for the village to be placed, a walkway about four blocks wide and twenty blocks long will be created with some small hollow rooms along the side of it. Redstone torches are placed along the specified wall and bam--we have a spiderite strip. But how do mobs spawn? This is where it gets a bit difficult. A psuedo-biome is create that envelopes the entire village. The pseudo-biome will only allow the NPC appointed to that village to spawn there, nothing else. No skeletons, pigs, cows, creepers--nothing. Other mobs can wander into the village but they will not spawn there. This NPC-biome will not take up entire chunks like a normal biome, this is becuse it isn't even a biome at all, just a space that allows a certain mob to spawn in it. If the world generator find that all mobs that have been spawned within this area were killed, it will stop spawning said mob because the player has pillaged the village. Easy, right? I based this off of how certain biomes get only rain or snow, and the desert gets neither. The same should apply to all entities including mobs, though it might require more coding and modifying of the game.
Do game factors affect NPCs?
Yes! If it begins to snow or rain, pigmen will go inside. Houndmen will only go inside if it rains, but since they only live in taiga and tundra biomes, they will get no rain. Spiderites will die if got in weather, so if you ask one "I wanna know, have you ever seeeeeeen the raaaaiiin?" They will reply with "lolno." And since some people won't get the song I am referring to due to most of the readers being children/have bad taste in music, I'll tell you right now it was a joke. Another factor that affects them are dropped items. If you drop an item near an NPC, they will place it in a chest. Simple.
How will the world generator create towns?
Pigmen villages will be created by having some pre-made houses placed around a type of plaza made from cobblestone in the shape of a square. Spiderite villages are made when a walkway is established, and the homes are just erected alongisde the walkway. Houndmen villages are stone boxes scattered about the top of a mountain. At this point I'm really just re-stating things I've said before so you know what I mean.
Badger villages?
We don't need no stinkin' badgers.
Closing statement.
I hope you've enjoyed my suggestion and all the jokes I've hidden within it. I need feedback as it took me a lot of typing to make this. About forty-five pages of "BEST IDEA EVER." comments would be appreciated. Keep criticism constructive, and I may add in any ideas you have.
NPC villages have been one of my most wished ideas, and you have some nice ideas yourself.
Thanks! :biggrin.gif:
Quote from pwajnkaim »
notch already said something about npc villages, he will add trolls and mabey pigmen, aparrantly if uou will be nice to them they will give you items and if you beat them they will attack you.
This makes me excited, though I wonder what criteria is required to "be nice" to them.
Yep, I am making that thread again. I have been thrilled about the idea of NPC villages ever since Notch mentioned them for the first time a while back. Now before any of you begin with the "Minecraft is supposed to feel isolated!" argument, think of it like this: expansion pack! Notch also mentioned expansion packs after Minecraft's official release at some point. I feel this can satisfy the anti-village and pro-village players.
I guess it sounds okay. What will be in the pack?
An ass-load of things! Notch could handle the pack idea like Will Wright did and create a sort of monopoly off of the idea. I'm going to try not to go too far into the idea of expansion packs and stick to the main topic. The pack will contain an almost entirely new game.
Pigmen - They build their houses out of wood and logs. The average pigman villages contains anywhere from three to twelve houses. Found in each house is a workbench, bed, and chest. Wait, what? No furnace? Well, allow me to explain kind sir or ma'am. The pigmen are Minecraft's (sort of) equivalent to the elves in Dwarf Fortress, which is much like Minecraft to begin with. The pigmen do not like to defile the land (Swampy awaaay!) thus will only build their homes out of wood since it is essential. Within each of their chests you may find a number of objects, such as wood, bookcases, books, wooden planks, bread, wheat, saplings, mushrooms, and flowers. Pigmen as a whole are pacifists, and will not attack you if you steal from these chests. Though, if you do happen to commit a crime such as murder or thievery, the civilian pigmen will flee and the town guards will attack you with wooden swords while wearing leather armor. If you kill all the guards, the town's pigmen will hide and show no attempt to stop you from pillaging their homes. If you do not wish to cause a tribal war, you can trade. For every item you remove from the chest you have the option of depositing a set amount of ore. Seven coal, four gold ingots, three ingots, or one diamond is the charge for each object you take from the chest. Civilian pigmen normally wield sticks, saddles, torches, and flowers. Some towns may have farms or reeds growing nearby to add to their nature-loving atmosphere. They two exclusive items called the greenbow/greenarrows and a special gem called dirtite. The greenbow is a special bow that fires greenarrows. This weapon spawns a cactus on an adjacent square next to the target it hits. This bow can only be found in pigmen chests. Dirtite is a green gem with swirls of brown in it that can be used to craft more greenarrows. Simply replace the flint with dirtite in the arrow recipe and you get four greenarrows!
Spiderites ("Spidermen" is copyright infringement!) - Spiderites are four-legged, four-armed creatures that live in caves around layer thirty. Instead of building houses, they have little grottos placed to the side of a central walkway. Along the walkway are about six homes. Each house will contain no bed, two furnaces, workbench, and a double chest. There may occasionally be some coal or wood in each furnace that you are allowed to take without harassment. Inside chests there can be mushrooms, ores of all types, tools, TNT, and armor. In order to remove something from the chest you must either supply the spiderites with ten logs, five iron, or a diamond, nothing else will be accepted. Since spiderites are a neutral species, any of the civilians nearby will attack you if you steal or murder. The average spiderite wields a pickaxe in one arm, and a sword in the other. Most of them will have on iron armor, and some may wear leather, but this is very rare as they seldom go to the surface. Since spiderites rarely go to the surface they light their homes with redstone torches to keep the visibility level dim. If you break a redstone torch they will swat you with whatever they have on hand, and then leave you alone. They have one exclusive item called superstring. Superstring is obtained in groups of two when a spiderite is killed. If you place two superstrings vertically on a crafting table, with flint positioned above the two superstring you get climbing rope! You can place climbing rope on a block and it will then allow you to descend down ten vertical blocks, replacing ladders effectively, with the only con being that it disintegrate after ten uses. Yeah, I guess that sort of defeats the idea of superstring, but nothing can ever have infinite uses you know!
Ironmen - Fight crime but are always drunk. Drops the Eyelander.Houndmen - I scrapped the idea of goblins to keep Minecraft's originality in tune with pigmen and spiderites. Hound men live on top of mountains, with the average villages consisting of three to nine homes. They build their houses out of cobblestone and smoothstone, and keep each house in the shape of a box with no windows. A houndman will stare at you if you are twenty to ten blocks aay, and attack if you get closer than ten blocks. So yeah, they are naturally aggressive but hard to find. They wear leather armor at all times, and commonly hold axes or swords made of stone. Their homes contain beds, workbenches, a furnace, and a chest. Each house has more workbenches than furnace since they don't dig underground due to being so high up. Their chests contain coal, smoothstone (Oh yeah!), wood and stone tools, glass, cooked porkchop, wooden planks, bones, feathers, little gunpowder, and leather. The only way to get these items is to sneak into their house without any houdnmen seeing you, or kill off the entire village. Houndmen resemble wolves, but with a darker shade of gray, and walk upright on two legs with two arms. Though they do walk upright, they have broad shoulders and hunch over just a little bit. Houndmen have two exclusive items, the houndman claw and fur pelt. The houndman claw can be made into a sword by placing two claws in the same spot you would for a normal sword. The claw sword does as much damage as a diamond sword, but has as many uses as a wooden sword. The fur pelt can be made into armor that is as strong as iron armor but lasts as long as leather armor.
I'm glad you've got all the eye-candy done ... but what about the technical side?
This isn't too complex. The world generator may occasionally create an NPC village, but it has restrictions to assure they are rare. For starters, there is a limit of one village per eighty chunks, no matter what species it is. In addition, there is always the possibility that a village won't even spawn at all. You may be wondering how the world generator decides where to place a village. I've got that figure out too. Pigmen villages will only spawn in rainforest, taiga, forest, swamp, and seasonal forest biomes. If the generator finds a spot that is one of those biomes and is not within eighty chunks of another village, it will flatten a reasonable amount of land, place a village using pre-defined buildings, fill the chests with random objects restricted to the NPC, then done. For houndmen, the generator looks for a mountain in the taiga and tundra biomes, widens it, flattens a portion of the top, and plops down a houndman village. Spiderite villages are the toughest since they only spawn in caves. The biome does not matter, just as long there is a cave and no villages too close, the cave will be widened and a spiderite town will be placed there. In order for the village to be placed, a walkway about four blocks wide and twenty blocks long will be created with some small hollow rooms along the side of it. Redstone torches are placed along the specified wall and bam--we have a spiderite strip. But how do mobs spawn? This is where it gets a bit difficult. A psuedo-biome is create that envelopes the entire village. The pseudo-biome will only allow the NPC appointed to that village to spawn there, nothing else. No skeletons, pigs, cows, creepers--nothing. Other mobs can wander into the village but they will not spawn there. This NPC-biome will not take up entire chunks like a normal biome, this is becuse it isn't even a biome at all, just a space that allows a certain mob to spawn in it. If the world generator find that all mobs that have been spawned within this area were killed, it will stop spawning said mob because the player has pillaged the village. Easy, right? I based this off of how certain biomes get only rain or snow, and the desert gets neither. The same should apply to all entities including mobs, though it might require more coding and modifying of the game.
Do game factors affect NPCs?
Yes! If it begins to snow or rain, pigmen will go inside. Houndmen will only go inside if it rains, but since they only live in taiga and tundra biomes, they will get no rain. Spiderites will die if got in weather, so if you ask one "I wanna know, have you ever seeeeeeen the raaaaiiin?" They will reply with "lolno." And since some people won't get the song I am referring to due to most of the readers being children/have bad taste in music, I'll tell you right now it was a joke. Another factor that affects them are dropped items. If you drop an item near an NPC, they will place it in a chest. Simple.
How will the world generator create towns?
Pigmen villages will be created by having some pre-made houses placed around a type of plaza made from cobblestone in the shape of a square. Spiderite villages are made when a walkway is established, and the homes are just erected alongisde the walkway. Houndmen villages are stone boxes scattered about the top of a mountain. At this point I'm really just re-stating things I've said before so you know what I mean.
Badger villages?
We don't need no stinkin' badgers.
Closing statement.
I hope you've enjoyed my suggestion and all the jokes I've hidden within it. I need feedback as it took me a lot of typing to make this. About forty-five pages of "BEST IDEA EVER." comments would be appreciated. Keep criticism constructive, and I may add in any ideas you have.
Thanks! :biggrin.gif:
This makes me excited, though I wonder what criteria is required to "be nice" to them.
Don't attack them... and that is it I would guess.