[Game] RealMoon Beta

[carlos_rupp]

Hi, my first time making a Minetest game and creating a topic here.

RealMoon

Minetest game: Simulation of a moon colony.

You are selected to be one of the first settlers in a Moon colony and have the mission of survive in this new world. The habitats are ready to use and you (supposed to) have the tools that you need. You start at the top of the Shackleton crater in the Moon’s South Pole. Good Luck!

Focus: Single player simulation, LAN multiplayer.

Spoiler

Features:

Real Moon topography with NASA data (mapgen by Alexander R. Pruss)
Real Moon gravity
Vacuum (adapted from mod by BuckarooBanzay)
Notebook (viewtopic.php?t=17910)
Some machines with the Technic mod (viewtopic.php?t=2538)
Air tanks (mod: viewtopic.php?t=17102)



Possibles future features:

Real Moon geology
Meteors
Space radiation
Vacuum propagation

Tips:

Use the air pump to eliminate the vacuum inside a building.
Use the air compressor to recharge the air tanks.
Soil become gravel in contact with vacuum.

Installation:

Just download e extract the zip file in the /games/ directory of the Minetest.
Tests made only in the 5.3.0 Minetest version.

Thanks to:

Minetest creators
Alexander R. Pruss for the mapgen
HoerMirAuf for fix idea for the Moon mapgen
and all used mods collaborators

Repository: https://github.com/FreeLANMan/RealMoon
ZIP file: https://github.com/FreeLANMan/RealMoon/archive/main.zip
Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n5Qk3f ... sp=sharing

Any feedback are welcome.

[Wuzzy]

Opinion:
- Interesting idea, but currently rather boring as a game, to be honest. There's not much you can do.
- I like the idea of using real NASA data for the topography. That's quite unique. Interesting to explore the "real" moon landscape. I also very much like the option to select different ways to generate the moon map. This is clearly the best part of the game
- Air is crucial, but it seems there is currently no way to produce more air bottles
- There's not much you can do on the moon itself. The only thing to find is moon rock and that's it. There's also pretty much nothing you can do with moon rock at the moment. No experiments, no science, no crafting, no sending them back to Earth
- Teleportation is pretty confusing. You never see beforehand when you are going to hit a teleporter

Suggestions:

- Add the basic needs for survival in the spawn buildings, especially air
- Spawn IN the buildings
- Add vehicles for faster travel, like a moon buggy or flying machine
- Add some way for the player to request Earth items like dirt or seeds by trading in moon rock or by completing quests
- Display coordinates (lat/lon) on screen, either permanently, or with a tool
- Make it possible to see a list of all locations in-game
- Add a tool that will show nearby or selected moon locations as waypoints
- Add settingtypes.txt for the moon mapgen settings
- Consider removing most of the old MTG cruft which doesn't really make sense on the moon, or replace them with more "spacey" versions
- Add some way to extract minerals or chemicals from the moon that could be then used to do things
- If you hit one of the borders that teleport you, make it so the player is facing "inward" the new terrain after teleportion (yaw). Otherwise, the player might teleport back and forth all the time
- Remove the GUI stuff (health bar, etc.) from the title screen images

Bugs:
- Many "useless" mapgens like v6 or v7 are displayed in the "new world" dialog. This gives the illusion of choice since its overwritten anyway
- The moon appears in the sky in the "blue" skybox mode
- If you make the moon very big in the mapgen settings, you might spawn out of map boundaries
- If you set the orthogonal mapgen mode, and go beyond the map border, the game crashes (lat or lon becomes NaN)
- You can "see" the vacuum while the map is generating, this creates a lot of ugly visible chunk borders
- Black sky, no stars, no skybox unless you enable fly mode (probably due to the way how the vacuum node is implemented)
- You will catch your breath in non-solid or partial non-air nodes like lamps, slabs, etc. even if they are surrounded by vacuum
- If you change any of the mapgen options, the spawn buildings will usually fail to spawn on the ground
- If you dig ca. 500 nodes deep, you fall through the Moon! (suggestion: Add a layer of a special undestructible node at the bottom)
- No sound when walking on moon rock
- Not really a bug, but it is pretty inconsistent: When you hit the border of the land, you can still dig and build on the moon rock beyond the border. I think the border should be visible and/or it should be not allowed to change the land beyond the border

[carlos_rupp]

Thanks for this complete review!

- "I like the idea of using real NASA data for the topography. That's quite unique. Interesting to explore the "real" moon landscape. I also very much like the option to select different ways to generate the moon map. This is clearly the best part of the game"
- "If you set the orthogonal mapgen mode, and go beyond the map border, the game crashes (lat or lon becomes NaN)"
-- This is the Alexander R. Pruss work. In this subgame the idea is not allow the use of alternatives mapgen modes and don't mess with spawn of buildings and players. I have to remove this options.

- "currently rather boring as a game, to be honest. There's not much you can do."
- "There's not much you can do on the moon itself. The only thing to find is moon rock and that's it. There's also pretty much nothing you can do with moon rock at the moment. No experiments, no science, no crafting, no sending them back to Earth"
- "Add some way to extract minerals or chemicals from the moon that could be then used to do things"
This is the big challenger of this subgame: Be a simulation and work as a game. And add real Moon geology is the way. The moon have ice, rocks, regolith, etc. but I don't know how to add to mapgen yet.
That is another way to make more fun: "Add vehicles for faster travel, like a moon buggy or flying machine"

I will try to do a new version with some of this suggestions.

[carlos_rupp]

The new version is out!

https://github.com/FreeLANMan/RealMoon2021

New Features 2021:

Meteors
Simple geology: (The location is based on the real moon's albedo.)
- minerals: regolith, highFeOregolith, lowFeOregolith, ice, basalt(drop cobble).
New recipes:
- bucket_empty + ice -> water bucket
- regolith x4 -> high FeO regolith (+lowFeOregolith x3)
- highFeOregolith + cook -> moldedregolith