Minecraft Forums

[*** WHAT IS BETTER THAN WOLVES? ***]

Better Than Wolves is a "total conversion". This differs from most mods that you are probably used to in that it changes many of the rules of play to provide a richer experience, rather than just adding in new stuff. What makes it special however, is that it always attempts to do so in a way that retains the original spirit of the game, perhaps even more so than the newer official releases.

It focuses both on challenging survival play, and player creativity in terms of never providing "magic block" solutions to in game problems. Instead, it provides basic tools and leaves it to the player to figure out how to use them to get the job done.

In short, Better Than Wolves is a vision of what Mincraft could have been, designed by a very serious player, for other like minded individuals.

[**** End Of Dev ****]

Please note that after a full decade, all development has ceased on Better Than Wolves. The final version (4.B0000003) can be downloaded here:

Download Link

And the source code can be downloaded here:

Source Download Link

Better Than Wolves and its source code are made freely available under the creative commons attribution license:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

You are free to modify and redistribute portions of BTW and its code as you wish, but I (FlowerChild) would appreciate acknowledgment if you do so. Keep in mind however that parts of BTW may be based on modified versions of Mojang's code and assets, and it is left to anyone redistributing portions of BTW to make sure they are appropriately considering Mojang's intellectual property and licensing as well.

/

This has been Destroy the Godmodder 2: Operator. Thank you for playing. I'm not exactly sure where to begin, so let me turn back the clock to, let's say, three years in the past.

Back then, I had a terrible computer. It loaded the Internet very slowly, I couldn't play browser games of any kind, and it was daily antivirus checks that kept it alive at all. It was a clunker, it was inefficient, but it was all I had, and it was what I had all my life. When I was younger I would love going to my relative's houses - at least they had computers that could play games.

Three years ago, in October 2012, I got a new computer - the one I own now. But this wasn't just any ordinary computer. It was a computer custom-built to play video games. My first purchase was Bejeweled 3. Yeah. What a great game, huh? Well yes, it is actually, but that's besides the point. When I asked my friends in school what I should get on my computer, they answered with the same reply, the game that everyone around was talking about - Minecraft.

I had first heard of Minecraft a few months earlier, when a friend I knew wouldn't stop talking about it. I went over his house once and saw him playing it on his computer. It was a world full of cubes, tools, item-making, and apples. I saw him create a golden apple there, and I thought, this must be a game about exploring, finding hidden treasures, and doing whatever you want! I wasn't that far off.

I bought Minecraft on October 6th, 2012. A Saturday. I was ready to get right into the game and learn all about its seemingly limitless world - but there was a problem, and a big one at that. Whenever I played in a new world for more than a few seconds, it started to lag. And when I say lag, I mean lag. As in, the most horrendous lag you've ever seen. It made the game downright unplayable.

I was ready to shelve Minecraft as a failure and move on. But then I found out that there was a cause to this glitch. The game had automatically set its render distance to 'Far', but that required having 64-bit Java. I didn't have 64-bit Java, so the game lagged. I installed 64-bit right away, and the lag problems stopped. I was ready to play Minecraft.

And I played, definitely. Minecraft became the defining game for me, the game that pushed me (for the most part) away from consoles and towards the PC. I got Steam and downloaded other games, Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, FEZ, Antichamber... All of which intrigued me and interested me like never before.

And it was while I was on the computer playing a game that my brother came into the room and showed me something he had found on the Minecraft Forums. We had never really gone on the forums before, and just occasionally lurked. But on that day in mid-March, he had decided to go onto the Forum Games section and take a look. Seeing the word "godmodder" on the front page and not knowing what it meant, he decided to take a look.

Thus, in mid-March, I learned of Destroy the Godmodder's existence. I was captured by it. It was so cool to me, the endless possibilities of throwing whatever you could think of at an all-powerful Minecraft player. It was amazing, it was funny, it was everything I had thought possible on the Internet at the time. The players constantly went on hilarious antics, and TT2000 kept them all in line.

Yet I never had a forum account, so I couldn't have played. When I first saw the game, it was around page 90. A new wave of Terrors had been summoned, and Steve and the Relic were on the field. I saw the game grow and expand, more and more attacks being typed up, more and more entities being summoned. And then, the Mystery Gate - a mainstay of the Battlefield with an (at the time) gargantuan 1,000,000 HP, was destroyed.

A new direction had opened up, a sidequest where players went into the mysterious Void. When I saw that, I knew I had to join. I knew I had to be a part of this new frontier alongside everyone else. And hey, my experience from reading everything thus far would help out a lot. I wouldn't be trapped by the mistakes other noobs had made - summoning Chuck Norris, banning the Godmodder...

I joined Destroy the Godmodder on May 9th, 2013. And we've already covered what I did afterwards. Almost got kicked into a pit, got kicked due to inactivity, got some swords, got a FEZ, created a Glitch, summoned GLaDOS, and helped out in any way I could. And then I started to worry. What would happen when the game was over? The Godmodder would be too powerful to defeat twice in one game. It wouldn't repeat endlessly like Destroy the Tower.

I didn't want it to stop, no doubt about that. And I felt confident that I could be the one to continue it. I had no experience in managing a forum game whatsoever, but that wouldn't stop me from trying. Besides, how hard could it be, right? Hahahaha. Famous last words.

I sent TT2000 a private message on July 12th, 2013. It was titled "Destroy the Godmodder 2?", and in it, I told TT that I didn't want to see the thread die, and I asked the rights to make a sequel. He said I could do it under two conditions: give him credit and don't make it be a carbon copy. As you can see, I've delivered on both counts - I've given credit and if you think this is a carbon copy of the first game, you need a lobotomy.

The game went on, and no one knew about my exchange with TT until the very end of the game, when I woke up on a late-summer morning to find that the game was over. The Anti-Chuck Norris Turret Tank had been destroyed, and the Godmodder was up for grabs. Anyone could claim the title as the destroyer of the Godmodder, anyone at all! Or so I had thought. Crusher48 ended up being the victor of the game, as he posted first, in a very suitably epic attack.

I started Destroy the Godmodder 2 on September 1st, 2013. More accurately, I started it at 2:48 PM - a mere seven hours after the first game ended. I didn't want there to be a lull in between games. On the contrary, I wanted to capitalize on the hype that the end of the first game had brought. And so I executed my plan, setting it into motion. The Godmodder would make his own server, trap everyone on, and it would be up to the players to stop him.

I fully intended to deliver on the promise that the game wouldn't be a carbon copy, and I figured that due to player interactions, entity summons, and my own ideas, I wouldn't have a hard time following up on that. I expected that the game would mature and steer its own path, but I had no way of knowing it would metastasize into the absolutely titanic thing that it became two years later.

Maybe if I had known, I wouldn't have made the game. If I had a time machine today and I went back in time two years ago to tell my younger self what an absolutely extravagant monstrosity he'd make by pressing the "Post Thread" button, I honestly don't think I would have done it. There have been a lot of real consequences to making this game that I wouldn't have been prepared for, not the least of which being its absurd length.

During the summer of 2013, I got into Homestuck, in addition to several other games besides Minecraft - the ones I mentioned earlier. All of these games, all of my interests, swirled into my head as I typed up Destroy the Godmodder 2, updating it as frequently as I could to the best of my ability. I tended to let my interests and what I liked flow into the game, so I added a Team Fortress 2 minigame, made an event with Homestuck as a basis, added items ripped straight from FEZ, and reintroduced characters from Portal. That definitely had something to do with why the game became what it is, but I'm convinced there was another factor - the timing.

As I just said, I made the game only seven hours after the first one ended. Because of this, everyone - and some new people - flocked to my new thread right away, checking it out and continuing the madness. And yes, it was definitely madness. With everyone posting so frequently and being drawn to the thread like moths to a digital flame, things quickly spiraled out of my control. Let's put this into numbers.

In just over four hours, Destroy the Godmodder 2 accumulated 100 posts, becoming a "HOT" thread back when those were still a thing. By the time I shut off the computer to go to sleep, the thread had accumulated another twelve posts - in another hour. The next day, when I went to look at how the game was going, I was terrified to see that 53 new posts (three entire pages) had sprung up in my absence. I frantically responded to all of them at once. 24 hours after I made the thread, Destroy the Godmodder 2 had gained 225 posts - 12 pages.

That was the first sign that something was wrong, that maybe I should have reconsidered making a sequel. Although that meteoric rise to popularity was never reached again, things went downhill from there. Massive charges and entities were springing up right off the bat when they had been virtually absent in the original thread's early days, and although there were no more "12 pages in 24 hours" days, there were still quite a lot of posts for the time. I wasn't used to 40-post turns, as the original thread had never gotten that much attention.

Thus came the source of my naiveté. I had assumed that this game would be functionally alike to the original in the way it progressed. I couldn't have been more wrong. From that first day, Destroy the Godmodder took an entirely different direction, and it - relatively quickly - gained an actual story. Drawing from the actions of players and ideas that had begun to form in my head, I turned a directionless plot into a story with twists and turns.

When people began to summon TIE-Fighters, I engineered a conflict against a Hivemind in a thrilling space battle. When Homestuck started being referenced, I alluded to a sidequest in a far-off temple, steered the players there, and had them get to the temple's hidden treasures with a harbinger of doom that fell from the skies itself. Then I had the cast of Homestuck appear on the field, and then its villains began interacting with the story. Then the Homestuck Invasion happened, and then alchemies started appearing, and then I became a First Guardian, viewing the all-too-real conflict of Minecraftia through a computer screen.

I'm not the first to say that the references and allusions quickly went out of hand, and I doubt I'll be the last. But they definitely did. Just a few months in, Homestuck had an influence on the story that could not be ignored by any stretch of the imagination, and for an entire Act, it was the story. That was good and bad - bad in that if you didn't like Homestuck, the story wasn't all that accessible, and good in that if it wasn't for Homestuck, I can't say for certain that I would have upheld TT2000's wish of DTG2 not being a carbon copy.

After the Homestuck plot had wrapped up, a full year had passed, and I was free to do whatever I wanted with the story and take it a brand new direction. I had begun thinking far ahead, planning out plot points that wouldn't be acted on for months - it was during the time of Intermission 2 that I began seriously planning the End of Act 4's fight against Binary. And with Act 3 came a new villain - Project Binary.

I uploaded the longest cutscene of its time on September 1st, 2014. Project Binary's true plans were revealed, to take out Minecraft from the inside out and to establish an elite team to do so. There was a new threat, and one that was more serious than anything that had come before it. The storytelling process was galvanized by the fact that I could draw pictures to add onto the game, pictures that started off sloppy but refined themselves into the series of posts that stand above this one.

This early part of Act 3 was the best part of the game for me - there were no story elements clogging up the game, and it was like a return to the good old days of the original, with an amount of new gameplay twists that were varied enough to keep things interesting. Then the latter half of Act 3 came, and things worsened in a way I hadn't foreseen - the game became as slow as molasses.

The Massive Battle of Armies was meant to be a point where everyone could wrap up their plotlines in a satisfying battle between everyone and everybody. I called it the beginning of the endgame, and it was meant to signal a shift where story would directly influence gameplay, leading right into the Trials - Act 4. To be blunt, it wasn't. The so-called "endgame" ended up lasting for nearly a year, as evidenced by me typing this eleven months later. Although the MBoA and the Glitch that followed it were good in theory, they dragged on for too long in practice, delaying the inevitable end of the game.

Act 4 helped that - at first. The first two Trials were simple enough that they could be completed in a short amount of time, but starting at Trial 3, the same problem happened - things happened two slowly, and the pacing of the game was shot in the foot. Trial 4, Trial 5, Trial 6, and Trial 7 all had this problem to varying degrees. I kept setting deadlines for myself, saying that I'd end the game here, then here, then there... and then I stopped setting deadlines after a while.

But here we are, in a series of posts that have been 730 days in the making. The game has ended, no doubt about that. I don't have any tricks left to pull in this thread, no more fake endings, no more psycheouts. This is it. Pat yourselves on the back. You've made it. You've made it to the very end of the game. The Godmodder has been destroyed, as has Project Binary.

I hope that I put on a good show. The story I was trying to tell with this game was one with as much action as I could muster, one that would keep everyone on their toes, wondering when the next surprise would jump out of the shadows. I know I can't please everyone with my storytelling, but I'm sure that I would have gone insane if I'd tried.

I know I could have done better, I really do. I recognize that I've made a lot of mistakes with regards to gameplay, player interactions, and the story. I let some things happen when they shouldn't have, I let some things not happen when maybe they should have. After a certain point, the main problem was this - I essentially became disconnected from the playerbase in a way. In my efforts to tell a story, I somewhat ignored all the side-antics going on, railroading everyone into doing X, Y, and Z. But that's not what Destroy the Godmodder is about. It's about choice and unexpected opportunities.

I think I failed on that regard. But on many others, I've succeeded. The amount of praise I've gotten from this game has been overwhelming, with many people praising me for what I've done and what I've sacrificed to get to this point. I've even gotten virtual hats over Steam - and a solid australium minigun. (Shoutout to Irecreeper, K4yne, and ninjatwist!) I've had people praise me for gameplay, dialogue, artwork, and storytelling. And this game has gotten me to do something - purchase a digital tablet and expand my horizons to art on the computer. For that, I am eternally grateful.

So, the million dollar question. All this GMing, all this planning, all this time spent on a computer leading up to this moment. Was it worth it, in my eyes? Was it all worth it in the end? To be quite honest, I'm not sure. This game has exercised my creative potential and my storytelling in ways I didn't think possible. It's been, in short, a learning experience. A definite learning experience.

I hope you all think it's worth it, at the very least. Because I've sacrificed a lot to do this. I've spent countless hours hunched over on a chair, mashing my fingers onto a keyboard to produce the words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs and walls that you've all (hopefully) read. Too many times I've been told that I'm doing too much, that I should stop the game prematurely. Too many times I've been asked why what I'm doing is so complicated, why it's been taking so long. Too many times I've had to not visit friends or family, go outside or go on special events because I've been busy locked away in a room as a digital scribe. My grades suffered for a time. My relationships with family and friends suffered. My relationship with the world has suffered.

So, was it worth it? Now you know why I'm not sure. I know I've told you all that I've sacrificed a lot before, and I know it might come across as begging for sympathy. I'm not trying to. I just want all of you to know what the cost of fame and greatness is. I want all of you to know that if you're thinking of making something like this, a massive and gargantuan plot - don't.

Or at least, don't do it like I did. I rushed myself, I didn't stop to think about what I was doing. I bit off more than I could chew, and it nearly backfired several times. Sure, it all ended up okay seeing as I'm typing this right now and not an "I'm cancelling the thread" post. But I still made a lot of mistakes. So here's my advice. Here's the lesson that I want you to take away from my tale.

Don't think as big as I did. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Think about what you can accomplish, and then set out to do it. Nothing more, nothing less. Don't seal yourself away from the outside world. Don't be afraid to live. Because as an operator once said, memento mori.

...Alright, that's enough melodramatic faux-psychological rambling from me. I've examined this thread enough. Let me answer the billion dollar question - what's next? Well I'm glad you asked, me. Here's what's next.

The next game in the Destroy the Godmodder series will not be a sequel, but a prequel. The_Nonexistent_Tazz is going to be the game master of the next game on this very forum: Destroy the Godmodder: Origins, or DTG0 for short. He's already talked about it plenty, but consider this the official announcement. You all will fight alongside the Godmodder as he tries to combat the unhinged UserZero to obtain the status of Omega+ Godmodder. I'll definitely be playing, so I'll see you all there!

As for Destroy the Godmodder 3... I'm honestly not sure what to do about it. TT and I had both assumed that there would be many people who wanted the title of the game master for DTG3, but not many people seemed interested in the part at all. Now that DTG0 is coming soon, the need for a DTG3 has diminished - so much, in fact, that I wonder if there will even be a third game. I know people (including me) have planned for one, but I don't know if it'll be a reality at all.

I planned the ending for this game in a certain way: I wanted it to seem final, like it would be a fitting end for the series as a whole, but I also wanted to leave some ambiguity so that if there is a DTG3, then this ending will set up the grounds for it. If there isn't, then I think I'll be happy with this ending. I feel like DTG2 ended on a very strong note. Not quite a happy one, since Minecraftia is gone for good, but a strong one. I've tied up (nearly!) everything, so there's that...

If DTG3 does end up being a reality, here's what I have to say for its future game master: take my advice. I desperately want DTG3 to be on a smaller scale than DTG2, and I know I've said that already. Don't think as big as I did. It prolongs the end of the game and adds too much stuff to keep track of. Just do that, and you should be golden...

Spinoff-wise, there are four games going on right now. There's the sequel to the TV Tropes game, called Destroy the Godmodder 2: Salvation. As you saw up above, it turns out that Alpha is the godmodder attacking TV Tropes! If you decide to play Salvation, you'll be seeing a lot more of him. Then there's a game going on on the Chocolate Pi forums - Destroy the Godmodder: MSPA Edition! Alpha's there too, and I have a hunch the kids and the trolls will turn up there before long. There's a spinoff of a doomed timeline of DTG2 called DTG2: Infinity that you can find on the DTG Forums, and lastly, there's a spinoff on this very forum called Destroy the Godmodder S: Acolyte! Hopefully at least one of these interests you, so go check them out! Their creators are working hard on them.

Now, work on DTG2 isn't 100% done either. Yes, I've finished the story, but there's still several things I need to get done. I doubt I'll work on the Echeladder/Forge Database ever, seeing as they're useless now. I might still do it for completionist reasons, though. Here's what's more urgent.

Crusher, I haven't forgotten about you! I will type up your Comb Rave, I just haven't been able to due to the EOA4 and this. In addition to that, there's a "lost turn" in Act 3 that I'll need to retype, and I'll need to rollback all the turns that were affected by the new editor throughout Act 2. Plus, I'll need to work on a new feature that I'll add in the OP: I've been going back and separating the acts and intermissions into chapters for archival readers! When I'm done, I'll add all of them at once so everyone can go back and read.

I'm going to be active outside of DTG as well. I'm planning future projects that will involve my digital tablet. The most ambitious of these is Trifecta, and its existence is dubious at best. I don't want to repeat the mistakes that led to DTG2's story, which were pushing myself and thinking too big. If I find some way to make Trifecta work, I'll do it. If not, then I guess there won't be a Trifecta.

I have a couple of other projects planned, and all I'm going to reveal about them are names: Pie Quest and The Tingleheads. What do those mean, you ask? All will be revealed in Time.

It's just... Wow. Looking back, it's hard to believe that two years have passed since I made this game. Once again, I want to thank anyone and everyone who's played this game, and especially those who have played long enough to be reading this right now! YOU guys are the reason this game has survived and thrived as long as it has, and I want to thank you for that. What good is a show without an audience, after all?

And on a final note: for all the things I've been through, and for the massive journey I've been a part of, it's hard to believe the fact that this is my first forum game. No, I'm not joking when I say that! It really is! And it's hard to believe that my first experience in forum game management turned into this. I said this game was a learning experience, and it definitely is. I've learned to never make another forum game as long as I live. If there's one thing this game has done, it's turn me away from being the manager of something.

I've been that long enough. It's time that I became the player again.

Alright then, that's it! I've officially run out of stuff to talk about, so that means the curtains have officially closed on Destroy the Godmodder 2: Operator. It's been a wild ride, and it's... it's hard to believe that it's actually over. For good.

I'm TwinBuilder! And as always,

Stay tuned.

(Hi! If you're still here and reading this, this is me from three years in the future (September 1st, 2018, to be exact). I decided to draw this to commemorate DTG2's five-year anniversary.)

People don't knock before entering my room. Also, they leave the door wide open after that.

Wow, that was an epic collapse by the Falcons in the 4th quarter. To be fair, the defense was probably exhausted having been on the field most of the game and the Matt Ryan fumble didn't help matters.

NEXT DAY EDIT:

On a side note, this was the best commercial:

Why not both?

Quote from Kuro»

I'm currently in my first Skype group call. Now I understand why people hate it so much.

When you're finishing up seeing a man about a wallaby in a public dunny and you just then notice that there's no bog roll

Quote from Spark»

2 is my favourite by far. 3 was the worst until they released the Citadel DLC which made it one of the best DLC's I've ever played.

Honestly I think 3 was the best in the series, while it didn't quite have the character building that 2 had, it had some amazing moments in it, like the fall of Thessia (minus Kai Leng and has stupid plot armor) and the feel of both hopelessness and hope. 1 was awesome except for the Mako driving and its level design, 2 was great for meeting characters but now that I've played the series a few times it takes away from it.

Quote from StarlightGlimmer»

They do, but at least it's not like the other cheesy cartoons.