[blokel] - Development

[devmarth]

Blokel is a fork of Minetest that is currently in development. It's goal is to provide a better Minecraft alternative, that's fast and simple but provides hours of fun and unique features. (This way it's not a complete Minecraft rip-off)

It's currently developed by two hobbyists including myself. (trucker32 being the other, not a user here)

Blokel "in a nutshell":
Blokel aims to be very fast, full of features, and beautiful. It's supposed to be easy and sophisticated. All plantlife will have its own AI so all plantlife can communicate with each other to grow bigger as a species. All mobs work together to prosper as a species, and it seems to be that everything works just like real life. Something Minecraft lacks of. Realism. This is probably one of the best MC "rip offs" you will find, if you're looking for this kind of game.

Features:
+ Trees replant saplings that have fallen so forests naturally grow back
+ Super fast (literally no lag)
+ Simple but beautiful graphics
+ An amazing map generation system
+ More challenging than Minecraft
+ Mobs
+ Larger inventory and no crafting tables
+ Farming
+ Armor
+ More coming soon!

Differences from Minetest:
+ Better farming and plantlife
+ Even less laggy
+ NPCs, and animals
+ Hunger and sprinting
+ Different textures
+ Armor
+ More blocks
+ More tools
+ Better map generation. It's ridiculous
+ Mapgen v7!
+ And more!

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Development Status: Active (as of March 15th, 2015)
Current version: 0.0.3

This post will be updated during the development of this game, and it's release is expected to be in a few months. When released, a separate thread will be made, as this is just a development forum for you guys to check up on development.

Other logos:

Spoiler

View the code on GitHub: http://github.com/blokel

[Casimir]

Sounds interesting.

What font are you using in the picture? I know what screenshot your are using though ;)

[Krock]

Are you sure you want to drop the references to Minetest?
I think it would be better to fork Minetest instead of uploading the complete thing as a seperate repo.

[devmarth]

Are you sure you want to drop the references to Minetest?
I think it would be better to fork Minetest instead of uploading the complete thing as a seperate repo.

I'm not sure what you mean, but I do need to make it a separate thing. Kind of like how Freeminer did the same thing.

There will be many engine changes as well as minetest_game changes.

[devmarth]

Sounds interesting.

What font are you using in the picture? I know what screenshot your are using though ;)

I used Pixlr and had the font Retro, and it gave me a few options for the style and I chose the slim one. So it's no specific font.

[oleastre]

Every time I see that kind of fork I wonder why ?
From your description, most of the work is done as a subgame.
So, what prevents you to contribute your changes to the engine so that every minetest user can benefit from those changes ?
Those changes can be packaged as a separate repository but contributed back as pull requests to the minetest code base.

[devmarth]

Every time I see that kind of fork I wonder why ?
From your description, most of the work is done as a subgame.
So, what prevents you to contribute your changes to the engine so that every minetest user can benefit from those changes ?
Those changes can be packaged as a separate repository but contributed back as pull requests to the minetest code base.

Because it's not like what you think. It's the same explanation Freeminer has.

[oleastre]

Sorry, but I probably lack some background to understand your answer.
Can you point me to the freeminer explanation so that I can understand ?

I understand that it requires more work to get a pull-request integrated in another project. But on the the long term, you will benefit from all the other improvements made on the minetest core.

[devmarth]

Sorry, but I probably lack some background to understand your answer.
Can you point me to the freeminer explanation so that I can understand ?

I understand that it requires more work to get a pull-request integrated in another project. But on the the long term, you will benefit from all the other improvements made on the minetest core.

The point is, I want to work on this game as I wish (and as my partner wishes). I don't really like where Minetest is going. I want to be able to make the features I like, and only what I like and what others who pull request like.

It's pretty much as simple as that. It's close to what Voxelands did but not exactly.

[rubenwardy]

That's what he was talking about, it will be fairly hard for you to port changes to minetest into your fork. What don't you like? The whole it's an engine thing?

[devmarth]

That's what he was talking about, it will be fairly hard for you to port changes to minetest into your fork. What don't you like? The whole it's an engine thing?

I like how it is an engine but I would like to make a fork that has more in-game releases, rather than engine stuff. So yeah kinda.

[12Me21]

You should make obsidian weaker (slighty stronger than glass) and remove obsidian glass (It doesn't even make any sense!)

Also, It would be cool if it took advantage of minetest's world height more. Make mountains that go up thousands of nodes, and giant cave systems. Maybe have erosion, so canyons form, and stuff like that.

[devmarth]

You should make obsidian weaker (slighty stronger than glass) and remove obsidian glass (It doesn't even make any sense!)

Also, It would be cool if it took advantage of minetest's world height more. Make mountains that go up thousands of nodes, and giant cave systems. Maybe have erosion, so canyons form, and stuff like that.

Yeah, the map generation currently is planned to do stuff like that. Not sure about the mountains. But it takes advantage of Mapgenv7, with a custom mapgen script for other things like villages and cooler map generation (obviously)

Thanks for the tips!

[devmarth]

GitHub account created: http://github.com/blokel

(Comes with a Linux compile script so you can check it out so far but it's not even close to done so I'm not released builds.)

[Jordach]

Making promises with a fork you can't keep?

You can't improve the engine - it needs a complete rewrite from scratch and in some places code from 2011 is still in use which are horribly inefficient.

Implementing mobs via Lua? Enjoy watching max_lag go from 0.1 to 2.0+ in the matter of a few seconds.

Seriously, this is more buzzwordy than E3. I ain't trusting a thing with forks as many turn out to be disappointing much like AC:U.

[devmarth]

Making promises with a fork you can't keep?

You can't improve the engine - it needs a complete rewrite from scratch and in some places code from 2011 is still in use which are horribly inefficient.

Implementing mobs via Lua? Enjoy watching max_lag go from 0.1 to 2.0+ in the matter of a few seconds.

Seriously, this is more buzzwordy than E3. I ain't trusting a thing with forks as many turn out to be disappointing much like AC:U.

Heh, alright man.

We will see when it's released.

Btw, if freeminer did it, I can do it.

(Also, not much "engine" stuff, it's mostly optimizations and whatnot)

[Jordach]

Making promises with a fork you can't keep?

You can't improve the engine - it needs a complete rewrite from scratch and in some places code from 2011 is still in use which are horribly inefficient.

Implementing mobs via Lua? Enjoy watching max_lag go from 0.1 to 2.0+ in the matter of a few seconds.

Seriously, this is more buzzwordy than E3. I ain't trusting a thing with forks as many turn out to be disappointing much like AC:U.

Heh, alright man.

We will see when it's released.

Btw, if freeminer did it, I can do it.

(Also, not much "engine" stuff, it's mostly optimizations and whatnot)

You can polish a turd but it's still a turd in reality.

Also, why not make a texture pack if you're just improving textures.

[devmarth]

Making promises with a fork you can't keep?

You can't improve the engine - it needs a complete rewrite from scratch and in some places code from 2011 is still in use which are horribly inefficient.

Implementing mobs via Lua? Enjoy watching max_lag go from 0.1 to 2.0+ in the matter of a few seconds.

Seriously, this is more buzzwordy than E3. I ain't trusting a thing with forks as many turn out to be disappointing much like AC:U.

Heh, alright man.

We will see when it's released.

Btw, if freeminer did it, I can do it.

(Also, not much "engine" stuff, it's mostly optimizations and whatnot)

You can polish a turd but it's still a turd in reality.

Also, why not make a texture pack if you're just improving textures.

You're right. I will release everything in minetest_game seperately (it will be called blokel_game inside the fork), but every other engine addition will have to be on GitHub.

But again, you are right, with you're turd reference lol, but there will be more to it than that. I promise :D

[GrammarGuy]

Heh, alright man.

We will see when it's released.

Btw, if freeminer did it, I can do it.

(Also, not much "engine" stuff, it's mostly optimizations and whatnot)

You can polish a turd but it's still a turd in reality.

Also, why not make a texture pack if you're just improving textures.

You're right. I will release everything in minetest_game seperately (it will be called blokel_game inside the fork), but every other engine addition will have to be on GitHub.

But again, you are right, with you're turd reference lol, but there will be more to it than that. I promise :D

It's "your".

[devmarth]

You're right. I will release everything in minetest_game seperately (it will be called blokel_game inside the fork), but every other engine addition will have to be on GitHub.

But again, you are right, with you're turd reference lol, but there will be more to it than that. I promise :D

It's "your".

Aha, you got me there. Sorry, not a native English speaker haha. Thanks for the correction though :)

[Krock]

So, I tested the game and can't notice any big changes yet.

However, if Windows users want to test it aswell:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q2k4q77lf1b0f ... 0.2-pre.7z

I modified two lines of code in client.cpp because someone forgot to remove the _LEGACY suffix.

EDIT: The blokel subgame is not included, get it here: https://github.com/blokel/blokel_game

[Linuxdirk]

+ Super fast (literally no lag)

So inventory management and moving stuff from inventory to chest is finally instant?

[philipbenr]

Thank you Krock.

@LinuxDirk: lol. in your dreams. ;) If devmarth can, get him to pull on the minetest-engine.

[devmarth]

So, I tested the game and can't notice any big changes yet.

However, if Windows users want to test it aswell:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q2k4q77lf1b0f ... 0.2-pre.7z

I modified two lines of code in client.cpp because someone forgot to remove the _LEGACY suffix.

EDIT: The blokel subgame is not included, get it here: https://github.com/blokel/blokel_game

Thanks man. Would you mind giving me a tutorial on compiling for Windows?
I can't seem to get it! I've only gotten it to work on Ubuntu and Fedora.
And I mean with buildbot.sh, I assume. I've tried myself but not all DLL's worked.

So if you could post a tutorial on compiling for Windows on Ubuntu, that would be great ;D

Or whatever way you did it yourself :)

(Also the client.cpp edit, would be nice, even though it may already be modified (see the new git pull))

[devmarth]

Updated screenshots! Check em out!