A Tome With Trials

A Tome With Trials is a game for Minetest, and a very special one, at that.

Prologue

The land is lush with greens, the brown soil of the fields makes the grass shoot up knee high. It would be easy enough to live off the fruit and leave this landscape untouched, forever keeping it's beauty intact. But, you know you'd get settled eventually in a favorite spot in this Valhalla, this Eldorado, and do more than just sleep under the stars at night. Perhaps it's that nice cove overlooking the sunsets over the water, or the viewpoint upon the ridge back east that has the winter muttons grazing.

No, this landscape demands a keeper. Someone who doesn't just take, but leaves a small but recognizable footprint. As friends come and go, they'll speak of this place with fondness, even years from now. Yes, it's a good day to get a head start before the sun stands high in the sky. Food. Wood. Dirt. Stone. That's how this place will be raised.

You reckon, know even, that you'll have to get stock. The traders aren't anywhere near, and it's not the season to make the long trails without a large cache of food. Not that it's dangerous to go out. As long as you stay afar from any of the caves, but you suspect that the caves may be useful to get to metal ores. You've heard stories about folk getting lost in caves searching for ores.

Then again, it's easier to go down the caves than up to the cloud rocks. You didn't believe the stories at first. It makes no sense anyway, rock mountains in the sky? But then, that one time, as you were gazing at the clouds in the warm summer fields, surrounded by the swaying wildflowers. It readily startled you, for sure. I mean, you've had a mutton lick you awake once when you dozed off, but this was a thundering thump! As you sat up to see what happened, you could see the brown dust cloud starting to settle just a few paces away. It was quite the sight, I mean, it left a small crater! Unsettling for sure. Of course, it was a very moist and tender lamb roast that evening, but you didn't tell any one of the event. Needless to say there was no other logical explanation that the poor mutton ihad fallen from a sky rock.

Umpf. Enough day dreaming. First, let us get some breakfast, and then start construction of our abode!

Anatomy of A Tome With Trials

A Tome With Trials is a story addition to the open sandbox world that minetest creates. The story is not open ended, there is a deliberate end game scenario, but the world remains open ended as such. The player can choose to progress through the story elements, or play the game in the traditional sense.

The story presents itself as a collection of books, each progressively offering the player hints. Some of these books contain simple stories, songs or even shopping lists, but there are some that speak of dangers, describe far places and magic like powers. As the player explores, they gradually uncover more knowledge of the world around them, and expose themselves to greater danger. This makes the game extremely suitable for both beginner players and experienced players.

The end game encompasses an entire world changing event that permanently changes the world to a much more dangerous place, challenging the experienced player and offering a lasting experience to the player.

A Tome With Trials is meant to be played alone. It is not intended nor suitable for unmoderated multiplayer gameplay, and as such, it contains elements and code that would likely not be performing well in a remote network situation. LAN gameplay, at best, should be possible.

ATWT, for short, is not compatible with minetest_game, nor is it compatible with minetest mods that depend on features in minetest_game. This is intentional: While mods in general are easy to make compatible, the ATWT game is intentionally balanced to provide an increasingly difficult environment, and adding mods that add items and nodes to the game would drastically change that balance.

For the very same reason, ATWT isn't compatible with minetest texture packs. Many of the basic nodes in ATWT are named completely different than their minetest_game equivalents.

Development and Project

All project development is done at our github project page:

• https://github.com/sofar/atwt

Please report issues through the github issue tracker.

Licensing Terms and Conditions

ATWT is licensed permissively, generally under the MIT-feh license (https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT-feh.html) for all ATWT code components. Artwork is generally CC-BY-4.0.

ATWT contains code and artwork that is borrowed from other mods and may be licensed under different license terms. You should confirm that your use of the code and artwork is compatible with these licenses. These licenses are stated in the subfolders and files of these components where relevant.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE X CONSORTIUM BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.