[Game] Survival Story [0.0.4]

[Blockhead]

hey everyone. question for you all:

what game window resolution do you play minetest on? like 1920x1080? or 1280x720? or lower? windowed for full screen? or some other resolution that's not 16:9 ratio? I've been currently using 1920x1080 for testing and for my demo videos

PC: 1920x1080 windowed (16:9)
Phone: 720x1600 fullscreen (20:9)
I also looked up chromebooks from local retailers and some of the cheaper ones have a resolution of 1366 x 768. I'm not sure how common 1280x720 is any more, even my cheap 2017ish laptop runs at 1366. But in terms of system requirements, people could be playing Minetest on that or lower.

, but understand i might need to test with lower resolutions. but how low... ?
as you know, my inventory UI is much larger and wider than the default minetest inventory, so lower resolutions of 720p might get kinda tight...

Lower resolutions definitely might get tight. Before I upgraded from my long-lived 1600x900 monitor, I noticed Factorio didn't run very well at that resolution, with the entity tooltips getting quite small (I think they have since added a scrollbar, but at the time..).

I thought about portrait: I thought about phones, but those only play Minetest in landscape. I thought about half-width windows. I use those sometimes in Minetest, usually with code on the other window beside. sfinv fits alright but Survival Story definitely wouldn't. But that's okay, I think that's an edge case.

Still, I would say to assume nothing lower than 720 width. But as for aspect ratios, in widescreen they could range from 16:10 to 20:9. 4:3 equipment still exists but I'm not sure how many people use it as a main monitor or to play Minetest instead of titles from the early 2000s or earlier. Still, you can't account for what some people might do.

Of course, I could be wrong in my assumptions. More data will definitely help.

[freshreplicant]

I play on 2560 × 1440.

[Melkor]

1920x1080

[ErrorNull]

appreciate the input guys. moving forward, i'll do my best to ensure inventory and UI layout displays properly at 1280x720 resolution at the lowest, though prioritizing 1920x1080 as the default resolution i work toward first. so anyone playing on higher resolution than 1080p should not have any issues.

[ErrorNull]

Update!

Mechanics for equip-able armor is now done. Similar to the clothing system, players place armor items into the armor slots to equip them. These slots include armor for the head, face, body, arms, legs, and feet. Similar to minetest_game, armor sets are grouped by the material it's made from. For demo purposes I have some armor items made from plant fiber, cloth, wood, and leather.

Random color variations of armor items will also appear in-game via loot or dropped by mobs. Farther down the road, I may implement a special dye/coloring station for clothing and armor.

I also added a new section below the clothing and armor slots that display the buffs that your equipped items cumulatively provide. Buffs like damage protection, cold protection, heat protection, etc. Each of these equipment buff categories are also buttons that can be clicked on from the UI to see the breakdown of which currently equipped items contribute to that buff total.

With the core mechanics for clothing and armor done, I'm finally moving on to the crafting stations! These are stations that players must click on to craft better items. Crafting stations will include campfires (food), forge/furnaces (smelting), workstations (tools/armor/misc), chemistry stations (healing reagents, poisons, gun powder, explosives), etc. I also plan to add ability to 'equip' these stations with special tools to make them work better, and ability to have multiple slots for fuel sources (for forge/furnaces), so you can just dump many different stacks of burnable items to smelt. here we go....

any comments or questions welcome!

video demo of armor equip system (9 min)
https://youtu.be/fknM1vZPoFg

[MisterE]

Just watched your lastest video. Very nice! Since you are starting on workstations, I have a suggestion:

Make the workstations world-based rather than formspec-based.

Some examples:
-The anvil mod that repairs tools
-for a crafting table, place items on the table: they show up on the table as entities and can be picked up again as easily. Hit it with a crafting tool (for some recipes, the hand, other possible tools: hammer, sewing needle, blowtorch :P) to transform the items into the craft.
- for furnaces, show the item in the furnace becoming cooked and then charred perhaps. (It depends on how far you simulate things, but the point is to have some immersive representation rather than a menu)

[ErrorNull]

Make the workstations world-based rather than formspec-based.

some time ago, i was considering doing that, and i think there's a minecraft mod that did a world-based crafting table. iirc, the player simply places the ingredients atop the surface of the in-world crafting table, arranged in the required crafting recipe pattern, and then crafting output appears. but my crafting system is gridless, so there's no recipe pattern to place atop the crafting table surface.

in regards to workstations like a campfire or furnace/forge, i'm also moving toward a menu driven approach since it's easier to interact the player inventory with that workstation's input slots and fuel slots, and can easily display the status of cooking/smelting and status of the number of input and fuel slots, which can change based on tools the workstation has 'equipped'.

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are you aware of any minetest mods (or minetest games) that have a world-based a crafting table or forge as an example? there could still be some aspects i'd like to explore if it can work with how i've got things going now.

for example, instead of a button to light the campfire/forge, the player can wield the fire source item (eg. flint/steel, match, torch) and right click on the workstation. and to turn off the workstation, the player can right click on it with any container of water, or pile of dirt or sand, etc..

[Skamiz Kazzarch]

Whelp, that took some digging to find it again, but I knew I saw something like that: Trucraft Lib
Never used it myself, so no clue how it actually plays, but might be worth checking out.

[Walker]

hey everyone. question for you all:

what game window resolution do you play minetest on? like 1920x1080? or 1280x720? or lower? windowed for full screen? or some other resolution that's not 16:9 ratio? I've been currently using 1920x1080 for testing and for my demo videos, but understand i might need to test with lower resolutions. but how low... ?

as you know, my inventory UI is much larger and wider than the default minetest inventory, so lower resolutions of 720p might get kinda tight...

Largest Setup: 3x 3840x2160 (11520x2160)
Normal Fullscreen: 3840x2160
Normal Windowed: 2560x1440

Smallest Setup: 1024x600 (ASUS EeePC / Acer Aspire One)

[MisterE]

There's nodecore, of course.
There's Draconis, which uses dragon fire to cook materials in its forge: You have to use your dragon to spit fire at the forge.
There's https://content.minetest.net/packages/FaceDeer/anvil/
Trucraft lib as Kazzarch mentioned.

[ErrorNull]

Whelp, that took some digging to find it again, but I knew I saw something like that: Trucraft Lib
Never used it myself, so no clue how it actually plays, but might be worth checking out.

There's nodecore, of course.
There's Draconis, which uses dragon fire to cook materials in its forge: You have to use your dragon to spit fire at the forge.
There's https://content.minetest.net/packages/FaceDeer/anvil/
Trucraft lib as Kazzarch mentioned.

trucraft lib looks pretty cool. i like how it handles the campfire and smeltery. the in-game crafting in nodecore is very good too.. i like how it defines the feel of that game.

Largest Setup: 3x 3840x2160 (11520x2160)
Normal Fullscreen: 3840x2160
Normal Windowed: 2560x1440

Smallest Setup: 1024x600 (ASUS EeePC / Acer Aspire One)

that's some high res setup you have. which one do you most often play minetest on?

[Walker]

Largest Setup: 3x 3840x2160 (11520x2160)
Normal Fullscreen: 3840x2160
Normal Windowed: 2560x1440

Smallest Setup: 1024x600 (ASUS EeePC / Acer Aspire One)

that's some high res setup you have. which one do you most often play minetest on?

Normal Fullscreen: 3840x2160
Normal Windowed: 2560x1440

[ErrorNull]

progressing on the campfire mechanics. every step i take is like another new concept to learn. i now have the campfire properly burning through and depleting the fuel items when turned on. and, it automatically shuts down when all fuel is spent. thanks to node timers, all this happens regardless if player is viewing the campfire ui window or not.

next tasks:
- add sounds
- add mechanics to actually cook ingredient 'input' items
- update campfire node visuals to reflect when campfire is on (show flames), off, or spent (show ashes).

for the time being the campfire node is just a plantlike visual. my goal is for it be a proper nodebox or mesh with flame particles, but that will be much later. just focusing on functionality for now.

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Screenshot 2024-05-16 202925.png (385.3 KiB) Viewed 7070 times

[Mr. Rar]

ErrorNull, are you making all the artwork yourself? It's some of the best artwork I have seen in Minetest. Looks really good!

[ErrorNull]

ErrorNull, are you making all the artwork yourself? It's some of the best artwork I have seen in Minetest. Looks really good!

thanks Mr. RAR! believe me there's lots of trial and error, and lots of studying samples from google image searches. the custom textures and icon images i've created so far are 32x32 pixels (which allows a bit more detail over the default 16x16) and i intend to have everything in that resolution when the dust settles. i also want to keep the performance impact as low as possible, so i won't go higher than this level of detail.

[ErrorNull]

my humble campfire now has basic smoke particle effects when it's lit. the node texture also changes when it's unlit (no flames) and when it's completely spent (an ash pile). flame on and flame dousing sounds working now.

still need to implement the food cooking mechanics... and also realized need to deal with ensuring the particle effects and sound effects restore correctly for lit campfires when rejoining the game or when player revisits the map chunk.

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[Kalashandrov]

Hi! I just made an account to ask you if you need some help with graphics and animations for this game. In case you do, I would like to help you :D

[ErrorNull]

hey there Kalashandrov, thanks for reaching out. i'm currently working on getting all the core mechanics in. but then some time later i'll need to add more content to existing features, like more animations and improved graphics and textures, more custom items, more recipes, more mobs, etc. stay tuned on my updates and when that time comes, let me know and i could use the help.

[ErrorNull]

here is a quick and dirty preview video of the campfire mechanics, which is about 90% done. video has no audio this time, just captions. usual style video where i voice all its features will come soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7A6n4gzPuo

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pending tasks:

- campfire requires a fire starting tool like flint & steel or matches in order to activate the campfire 'on' button.

- campfire requires water or some form of dirt from the inventory to activate the campfire 'stop' button.

- create mechanic to bundle/stack items together that are the same type, but maintain their unique properties for wear (eg. tools and armor), cook progress (items being cooked), usability (wear on campfire tools).

coming next:

- video that showcases my new item-drop bag, which ensures no dropped items despawn from the world. this was also necessary to help campfires operate, since in certain scenarios campfires drop items to the ground as their tools (eg. stands, grills) wear out and drop any contents held in the ingredient slots and fuel slots.

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[ErrorNull]

Update:

here's the video showing the item drop bag mechanics. when I was playing Project Zomboid, I was impressed to see that none of the dropped items ever despawn. I wanted this feature for my game as well. in minetest default, dropped items despawn after 15 minutes. the purpose of my item drop bag is to serve as a node type of container for the items, so that after 5 minutes of an item being dropped, a bag is spawned there and holds the items.

Video demo of itemdrop bag (4min):
https://youtu.be/op13kHZEB9g

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this feature was also needed due to how my campfire (if left unattended) would drop fuel items and ingredient items to the ground if its tools (like campfire stand and grill) burn out. i didn't want these dropped items to despawn when a player has gone exploring while leaving the campfire on to cook.

The item drop bag also works well in water by using plantlike_rooted variant of the bag. it also works in multiplayer without issue.

next tasks:

- ensure campfire requires a fire starting tool like flint & steel or matches to start it, either by wielding it and right clicking the campfire, or by clicking the campfire start button from within the campfire UI.

- ensure campfire requires water or some form of dirt, either by wielding it and right clicking the campfire, or by clicking on the campfire stop button within the campfire UI.

- provide full video demo of campfire

[ErrorNull]

Update:

here's the video showing the full demo of the campfire.

Video full demo of campfire mechanics (25min):
https://youtu.be/jPHe1ej7MDg

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main features:
- items can be partially heated/cooked
- cook progress visualization (in orange)
- increase number of ingredients and fuel slots with tools
- fuel weight limit mechanic
- custom wear visualization (in green) for campfire tools and fire starter items
- campfire heats/burns nearby nodes
- campfire tracks elapsed burn time when unloaded from map

i will next be uploading a playable demo so i can get more feedback and bug reports. but will need to finish up the following things:

- add cooked versions of minetest game items from the farming, stairs and wood mods
- add recipes for the clothing and armor so far
- make the existing craftable fiber bags place-able in the world to act as basic storage
- update fromspec code, been using default version 1 this whole time >_<

give me a week or two and afterward will have it on my Github page. after all that, my roadmap continues...

- Item Bundling: stack items that have varying wear or cook progress
- Furnace: to smelt ores
- Workstation: to craft better tools and repair and scrap items
- Basic wooden chest (requires nails from smelting ores and crafting in workstation)
- 3 Game Animals: seagull (passive), fish (passive), and boar (semi-hostile)
- Custom building system: blocks with hp, can be repaired, and can be upgraded

[ErrorNull]

Update:

Storage bags complete. More precisely just the fiber made variety. Bags of other materials certainly planned. I've also completed redo all my formspecs to the v7 spec... and spent the last week or two also refactoring code and trying to make it sensible before throwing it up to github.

Short video demo of storage bags (4 min):
https://youtu.be/Lqq5gwtXN8E

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These bags are items that can be crafted or found in loot. When equipped in the player's inventory, storage bags can provide additional inventory slots and increase the weight maximum a player can carry. These bags can also be placed in the word, where items can be stored away from the player's inventory.

All storage bags can be worn out and their current condition can be seen from the player's inventory or while viewing the contents of a bag that's placed on the ground. Bags get worn during use - when items are added or removed from the bag. The higher the weight of the item being moved, the more wear it causes. Bags also receive wear from being dug up.

Once a bag is completely worn, it is permanently destroyed and it's contents fall to the ground. Bags cannot be placed underwater - it will simply drop its contents and the bag item itself will receive some wear.

A feature I plan for the future is to allow players to move a bag already placed on the ground a short distance (like 1 or 2 meters), without having to dig it up or emptying its contents.

next tasks:

- Food Containers: i already had a wooden cup you can fill with unfiltered water and drink. but making the code more modular, to be the foundation for bowls, jars, tin cans, etc. which you can cook over the flames to purify or improve the food. about 50% complete with that system.

- Item Bundling: will be important as players accumulate items of varying usage levels and cook levels, like tools, weapons, clothing/armor, food etc.

Then i'll be ready to upload it up on github for everyone to try, break, and give feedback.

[ErrorNull]

Hello guys. wonder what your opinions are on client side mods?

my goal is to offload processing from the server and onto the client side for my game to ensure good performance. i'm not that familiar with creating CSM's yet, but thinking i should look into it and not wait until my code is too deep and solidified purely on server side.

would i be able to use CSMs to more efficiently handle client side stuff like player inventory UI sound effects and on-screen player notifications?

[Mantar]

The CSM API is a bit limited in what it can do, check doc/client_lua_api.md to see what's what. Inventory UI sound effects and hud items could be done in it.

We use it over in Exile land for lag-free control handling on servers for our development branch. Really waiting on SSCSM because installing CSMs is terrible right now.

[ErrorNull]

@Mantar - been skimming through the client_lua.api.md. it appears lots of the stuff are similar or duplicates of the normal mod api, though a very small subset. but quite a bit i can take advantage of.. but hopefully won't open up new challenges.

is this the official issue tracker for this SSCSM concept?
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/10594

i'm not that knowledgeable on it, and whether it ,might help my game.. ? btw, love your Exile game. it's among the few out there that has the more serious survival elements i'm looking for in playing and creating for.