Minecraft lacks a key part of any game, and that is a goal.
I suggest creating several simple scenarios that can be loaded with a new survival world, that gives the player some direction.
Here's an example.
Scenario One: Kill a King
You spawn in a normally generated world with a map. On this map is your location, and the location of a castle nearby. Your goal for the map is to kill the king of this castle. You must find the castle, survive long enough to stockpile food and weapons, and then storm the castle and kill the king. Perhaps when you kill the king you'll get a little congratulatory message, but afterwards the world plays normally.
The point of this scenario is to give the player a goal. A reason to mine all the way down for the diamond, to do battle with spiders and to explore abandoned mines.
Now this is the bare frame of a scenario, the kind available from the beginning. It's as vague and full of possibilities as a normal generated world. You can do what you want how you want it.
However even this might get stale after a while. So, here's the kicker: a scenerio editor. Generate a random scenario map and enter in creative mode. This is hypothetical, since I'm assuming NPCs will be added soon. Anyways, it's the same as creative mode, plus the ability to add/move NPCs. So, now you can build your own castle, perhaps much harder to breach. You can place the king somewhere harder to reach. Perhaps you set a bunch of enemy squads patrolling randomly through the forest (assuming patrol is an option when creating an NPC).
As you can see the difficulty and complexity of a scenario can be vastly increased through a simple editor. ANd it can be taken even farther. If the level editor would go a bit farther, you could create entire games inside of a scenario. It's the adveenture craft mod without the mod. That makes it more stable than a mod, usable in multiplayer, and easy to transfer (not saying adventurecraft isnt an amazing mod because it is). You could add simple writing abilities, then you'd have a story, some background. NPCs could talk, give suggestions, share rumors: "I heard there's a great treasure by X."
Not only could you creating an entire game inside of minecraft, you could create a type of game that couldn't exist anywhere else. Minecraft is as much about exploring and surviving as anything else, part of the game is just being there. Because of that, you can make the method of success as obscure as you want it to be. Maybe you build a castle that simply can't be assaulted head on. The only way in is tunneling underneath at a certain spot. Now, faliling around you're unlikely to find the spot and method on your own. But maybe there's one woman in the town by the castle that has a miner friend who might be able to help you out. That's what I'm talking about. You could make the solution that hard to find because in a game like Minecraft, surviving is still playing. Besides, it's a playermade castle, I'm sure there's some other way in.
And it could be taken STILL FARTHER. If enough work was put into the adventure mode, you'd have the option of creating a game where the only way to win is to recruit rebellious repressed peasents from the city and surrounding country to attack the palace and allow you to win through and attack the king. Yes I know that's pushing it a bit. But it's not completely out of the question.
Now that's just one scenario expanded to present the potential each simple scenario has. There are plenty of other types of scenarios. One might be an already popular idea of zombie survival, where zombies have the abilities to break blocks and you mmust create a functional base to survive the night. Or another one might be surviving the end of the world, where natural disasters strike rapidly one after another after a ten day period. Tornados, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, etc. You'd need only a few such scenarios, player could expand on the rest.
And think of the glorious glorious mods that might result from this. Players will make a game better than a developer ever could (no offense notch you've done a great job). In the end Minecraft is a sandbox game; a game that exists for players to create something in.
-----
There are two reasons I think this would be far superior to Adventure Craft with the mod API looming ahead.
The first is that this would make the game fun in it's own right, after the excitement of exploring randomly generated worlds has worn off a little. Mods should come after a game has been experienced fully on it's own, and this adds a lot more to experience.
The second reason is that, as wonderful as mods are, they should be kept on a tight leash. The game belongs to the developer, and mods shouldn't be as popular as they are now (in my opinion). This type of adventure mode would render a lot of the major game changing mods obsolete. Millionaire and adventure craft would no longer be necessary. Weapon and Craft expansion mods will still be there, but it'll be a fun afterthought instead of the focal point of the game.
I, personally, think you are brilliant of thinking of this.
I just have a few suggestions.
1. Make what you just said an option, so you could do normal minecraft, or one of the scenarios you thought of.
2. I have a suggestion of another scenario:
You have X amount of days to make a castle. (amount of days dempending on difficulty)
When the days are over, npcs in the hundreds come attacking you day after day after day.
Now here's the catch: the npc's can destroy certain blocks, open doors and operate buttons and switches.
And with the hunger you will need to stockpile food before the attack to survive.
Your score is how many minecraft days or real minutes you survived.
Plus there is a boss, like someone with diamond armour or something, that comes every X days (the amound of days, again, depending on the difficulty)
When you die the world is deleted.
And you can have this as a plugin on multiplayer, or you change it in the config.
AND on multiplayer there could be two teams, each randomly assigned.
To win you need to either kill everyone, the killed players get banned until only one team is left, or to capture a flag.
The flag will be a placeable item which you can put anywhere, for example in an obsidian case which is surrounded by lava which is surrounded by yet another layer of obsidian.
You can also pick up the flag item, and put it in a kind of armour slot.
When you put it in that slot you become the king!
When the king is killed the flag item is dropped, and if the enemy gets the flag they have to take it back to their base and place it next to their flag, ending the game.
And players can revive people! The only way to revive people is by making a special room and putting a block which you have to craft inside it. Plus you need to put some certain items in a slot that the crafted block has.
When you put the items in the crafted block, a screen comes up, asking you to type in the players name.
To revive the player you need to stay still for a certain amount of time.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I suggest creating several simple scenarios that can be loaded with a new survival world, that gives the player some direction.
Here's an example.
Scenario One: Kill a King
You spawn in a normally generated world with a map. On this map is your location, and the location of a castle nearby. Your goal for the map is to kill the king of this castle. You must find the castle, survive long enough to stockpile food and weapons, and then storm the castle and kill the king. Perhaps when you kill the king you'll get a little congratulatory message, but afterwards the world plays normally.
The point of this scenario is to give the player a goal. A reason to mine all the way down for the diamond, to do battle with spiders and to explore abandoned mines.
Now this is the bare frame of a scenario, the kind available from the beginning. It's as vague and full of possibilities as a normal generated world. You can do what you want how you want it.
However even this might get stale after a while. So, here's the kicker: a scenerio editor. Generate a random scenario map and enter in creative mode. This is hypothetical, since I'm assuming NPCs will be added soon. Anyways, it's the same as creative mode, plus the ability to add/move NPCs. So, now you can build your own castle, perhaps much harder to breach. You can place the king somewhere harder to reach. Perhaps you set a bunch of enemy squads patrolling randomly through the forest (assuming patrol is an option when creating an NPC).
As you can see the difficulty and complexity of a scenario can be vastly increased through a simple editor. ANd it can be taken even farther. If the level editor would go a bit farther, you could create entire games inside of a scenario. It's the adveenture craft mod without the mod. That makes it more stable than a mod, usable in multiplayer, and easy to transfer (not saying adventurecraft isnt an amazing mod because it is). You could add simple writing abilities, then you'd have a story, some background. NPCs could talk, give suggestions, share rumors: "I heard there's a great treasure by X."
Not only could you creating an entire game inside of minecraft, you could create a type of game that couldn't exist anywhere else. Minecraft is as much about exploring and surviving as anything else, part of the game is just being there. Because of that, you can make the method of success as obscure as you want it to be. Maybe you build a castle that simply can't be assaulted head on. The only way in is tunneling underneath at a certain spot. Now, faliling around you're unlikely to find the spot and method on your own. But maybe there's one woman in the town by the castle that has a miner friend who might be able to help you out. That's what I'm talking about. You could make the solution that hard to find because in a game like Minecraft, surviving is still playing. Besides, it's a playermade castle, I'm sure there's some other way in.
And it could be taken STILL FARTHER. If enough work was put into the adventure mode, you'd have the option of creating a game where the only way to win is to recruit rebellious repressed peasents from the city and surrounding country to attack the palace and allow you to win through and attack the king. Yes I know that's pushing it a bit. But it's not completely out of the question.
Now that's just one scenario expanded to present the potential each simple scenario has. There are plenty of other types of scenarios. One might be an already popular idea of zombie survival, where zombies have the abilities to break blocks and you mmust create a functional base to survive the night. Or another one might be surviving the end of the world, where natural disasters strike rapidly one after another after a ten day period. Tornados, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, etc. You'd need only a few such scenarios, player could expand on the rest.
And think of the glorious glorious mods that might result from this. Players will make a game better than a developer ever could (no offense notch you've done a great job). In the end Minecraft is a sandbox game; a game that exists for players to create something in.
-----
There are two reasons I think this would be far superior to Adventure Craft with the mod API looming ahead.
The first is that this would make the game fun in it's own right, after the excitement of exploring randomly generated worlds has worn off a little. Mods should come after a game has been experienced fully on it's own, and this adds a lot more to experience.
The second reason is that, as wonderful as mods are, they should be kept on a tight leash. The game belongs to the developer, and mods shouldn't be as popular as they are now (in my opinion). This type of adventure mode would render a lot of the major game changing mods obsolete. Millionaire and adventure craft would no longer be necessary. Weapon and Craft expansion mods will still be there, but it'll be a fun afterthought instead of the focal point of the game.
Minecraft got no goal, thus, makes it awesome.
I just have a few suggestions.
1. Make what you just said an option, so you could do normal minecraft, or one of the scenarios you thought of.
2. I have a suggestion of another scenario:
You have X amount of days to make a castle. (amount of days dempending on difficulty)
When the days are over, npcs in the hundreds come attacking you day after day after day.
Now here's the catch: the npc's can destroy certain blocks, open doors and operate buttons and switches.
And with the hunger you will need to stockpile food before the attack to survive.
Your score is how many minecraft days or real minutes you survived.
Plus there is a boss, like someone with diamond armour or something, that comes every X days (the amound of days, again, depending on the difficulty)
When you die the world is deleted.
And you can have this as a plugin on multiplayer, or you change it in the config.
AND on multiplayer there could be two teams, each randomly assigned.
To win you need to either kill everyone, the killed players get banned until only one team is left, or to capture a flag.
The flag will be a placeable item which you can put anywhere, for example in an obsidian case which is surrounded by lava which is surrounded by yet another layer of obsidian.
You can also pick up the flag item, and put it in a kind of armour slot.
When you put it in that slot you become the king!
When the king is killed the flag item is dropped, and if the enemy gets the flag they have to take it back to their base and place it next to their flag, ending the game.
And players can revive people! The only way to revive people is by making a special room and putting a block which you have to craft inside it. Plus you need to put some certain items in a slot that the crafted block has.
When you put the items in the crafted block, a screen comes up, asking you to type in the players name.
To revive the player you need to stay still for a certain amount of time.