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Not meaning to be dismissive, but why not just Minecraft? There is a large modding community. And there's something called Adventure mode which puts more constr

by hoten 6y ago

Not meaning to be dismissive, but why not just Minecraft? There is a large modding community. And there's something called Adventure mode which puts more constraints on the player (can't destroy blocks), which can be used to make goal-oriented maps.

k__ 6y ago
I guess, Minecraft has some kind of licence restrictions.
johnisgood 6y ago
Is modding officially supported by now?
- imtringued 6y ago
  No, it isn't. Also, maintaining mod updates to newer minecraft versions is a huge hassle. I know a friend who stopped updating his mods in 2018 and now everyone is begging him to release a new update. First, because minecraft uses a different obfuscation pattern for each update requiring a recompile. Second, because the codebase is still changing significantly.
Kiro 6y ago
I always ask the opposite. Why mod when you can make your own game? For me, the latter is much more fun.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  You definitely should do whichever you find more fun. But for Minecraft there are two clear "why" answers which interact: 1. There is a huge modding community so while your mod might be somewhat interesting on its own, the rest of that community can interact with it too, doing things which you didn't conceive of, but nevertheless would not have existed without your mod and that adds even more value. Example: Applied Energistics is a mod about storing things as data and then accessing that data over a storage network. Inside the game you walk up to a terminal and type like 'coal' and see that somewhere in the network is some coal, which you can now pick up and use from this terminal, or maybe you're carrying some stone you don't need, you just drop that into the terminal and it's stored on some disk elsewhere. Is managing disk space, etc. fun? For some people it is. Thaumcraft adds a system of elemental magic to Minecraft. You can discover what "elements" make up blocks in the world, even enemies you meet, and harvest them to do magic. You can convert the magic into some sort of liquid or gas and combine it in new ways to make things from it. So then an author says these both sound good, let's apply AE to Thaumcraft, and they make Thaumcraft terminals in AE, so now you're storing magical elemental fluids as bytes on a storage network. You cast some spells, realise you're low on fire element, you run up to a terminal type 'ignis' and get some fire element from a remote storage system. 2. There's an enormous ready to go audience for modded Minecraft. So that's low friction for going from an idea to getting some playtest feedback. You have an idea, you make it out of existing mods, maybe some parts are sketched in, some configuration values are pretty arbitrary. You upload that and people can try it immediately on any platforms that play Java Minecraft (so not consoles). If it sucks you can throw it away the same week you started it. You can take this really far (e.g. some packs involve actual custom programming just for that one pack) or just throw together a dozen things you like and see if it's fun with them all together with no tweaking at all.
- tripzilch 6y ago
  But they're not asking how to make their own game, they want "a game engine for making games in Minecraft style". I'm all with you that actually doing something original is much more fun, but this isn't that. "I want to build a shitty minecraft but with my name on it" The only thing that Minecraft has going for it, is its unique type of gameplay. The sheer power of its original concept even elevated the hopelessly backwards retro graphics to its own genre. I'm just saying, because simply modding Minecraft wasn't enough, that comes with "licensing issues", aka they can't say "I made this".

by hoten 6y ago

k__ 6y ago

I guess, Minecraft has some kind of licence restrictions.

johnisgood 6y ago

Is modding officially supported by now?

imtringued 6y ago
No, it isn't. Also, maintaining mod updates to newer minecraft versions is a huge hassle. I know a friend who stopped updating his mods in 2018 and now everyone is begging him to release a new update. First, because minecraft uses a different obfuscation pattern for each update requiring a recompile. Second, because the codebase is still changing significantly.

Kiro 6y ago

I always ask the opposite. Why mod when you can make your own game? For me, the latter is much more fun.

tialaramex 6y ago
You definitely should do whichever you find more fun. But for Minecraft there are two clear "why" answers which interact: 1. There is a huge modding community so while your mod might be somewhat interesting on its own, the rest of that community can interact with it too, doing things which you didn't conceive of, but nevertheless would not have existed without your mod and that adds even more value. Example: Applied Energistics is a mod about storing things as data and then accessing that data over a storage network. Inside the game you walk up to a terminal and type like 'coal' and see that somewhere in the network is some coal, which you can now pick up and use from this terminal, or maybe you're carrying some stone you don't need, you just drop that into the terminal and it's stored on some disk elsewhere. Is managing disk space, etc. fun? For some people it is. Thaumcraft adds a system of elemental magic to Minecraft. You can discover what "elements" make up blocks in the world, even enemies you meet, and harvest them to do magic. You can convert the magic into some sort of liquid or gas and combine it in new ways to make things from it. So then an author says these both sound good, let's apply AE to Thaumcraft, and they make Thaumcraft terminals in AE, so now you're storing magical elemental fluids as bytes on a storage network. You cast some spells, realise you're low on fire element, you run up to a terminal type 'ignis' and get some fire element from a remote storage system. 2. There's an enormous ready to go audience for modded Minecraft. So that's low friction for going from an idea to getting some playtest feedback. You have an idea, you make it out of existing mods, maybe some parts are sketched in, some configuration values are pretty arbitrary. You upload that and people can try it immediately on any platforms that play Java Minecraft (so not consoles). If it sucks you can throw it away the same week you started it. You can take this really far (e.g. some packs involve actual custom programming just for that one pack) or just throw together a dozen things you like and see if it's fun with them all together with no tweaking at all.
tripzilch 6y ago
But they're not asking how to make their own game, they want "a game engine for making games in Minecraft style". I'm all with you that actually doing something original is much more fun, but this isn't that. "I want to build a shitty minecraft but with my name on it" The only thing that Minecraft has going for it, is its unique type of gameplay. The sheer power of its original concept even elevated the hopelessly backwards retro graphics to its own genre. I'm just saying, because simply modding Minecraft wasn't enough, that comes with "licensing issues", aka they can't say "I made this".