nodecore-cd2025/docs/roadmap.txt

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ROADMAP: Large New Development Projects
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- Split this doc into "core gameplay" and "side quest" forks?

- Standardize visinv access API
	- stack_access(pos, node, dirfrom) - return booly
	  whether access to inside stack is allowed.
	- Use for shelf API.
	- Use for touchtips inv access.
	- Use for node punch sounds.

- Consider using a separate kind of water node for artificial water.
	- For sponge squeezing and future pumping features.
	- Make it a little grayer, or clearer than natural fresh water?
	- Non-renewable, so we don't have to worry about placement.
	- Can sanely attach ABMs to check for a supporting node, or
	  periodic signalling to remain.
	- Change sponge squeezing recipe to act as a long-term water source.
		- Don't reabsorb if squeezed recently (< ~4sec)
		- Don't time out the water; keep it until sponge removed.

- Door Automation
	- Should have press recipes for stickcraft, i.e. staves,
	  frames, ladders.
	- Press tools (or tool heads) into nodes to activate other
	  pummel recipes like chopping.
	- Press recipes for digging.
		- If pushing a node (or toolhead backed by node) and there
		  is a climbable walkable behind it, or a storebox, dig the
		  node and push it through climable as catapult, or into
		  storebox if it fits.
	- Pressing stack of 1 node places it, instead of pummeling it.
	  Can pummel on the second push.
	- Should doors trigger place recipes when blocked?
	- Push players?
	- Need more door materials: lode, glasses

- Lava quenching, new material?
	- Seepstone?

- Lux Ore
	- Reconsider mapgen depth; push downwards?
	- Infuse other materials
		- Infuse clear glass to make "smoked" glass.
			- Does not transmit light.
			- See-thru only from one side.

- Should there be pockets of softer stone at depth, like there is gravel?

- Consider upstreaming nc_stucco, maybe into nc_concrete?
	- Credit Avicennia G
	- Stylus from stick+chip, stick+prill, etc. using "scratchy" group.
	- Add materials for mud+ash, sand+ash, add coal lump to agg.
	- All materials work like concrete, falling, liquefy with water.
	- All of them cure to a tacky state first, then to dry.
		- Become tacky if molded, cure to lower material otherwise.
		- Use soaking.  Etching allowed to reset timer?
	- Include a few etched patterns.  Separate mask and noise layers.
	- Not relocatable; dig to cobble, dirt, sand, etc.

- Offline tick logic for spreading nodes
	- Use soaking API, calculate time to spread.
	- If actual time exceeds time to spread, pass soak depth on to
	  new node that's been created, and trigger respread check.
	- Will have to do a lot of performance testing.

- Special glass handling?
	- If glass is connected to other glass, it doesn't dig
	  trivially.
	- Break into crude glass instead, and break surrounding
	  nodes too.

- Domain Wall Sensor
	- Adapt from sztest?
	- Field Generator?
		- Power an annealed lode block from 2 opposite faces.
		- Generates particle effect at mapblock boundary.
	- Particle effect with lux fluid?

- Water and lava surface springs.
	- Access to water for forges.
	- Access to lava for lighting, firestarting, glass?

- Lurk Ore
	- Moves freely among air-exposed stone while no player is looking.
	- Follows after player, attempting to cause harm.
		- Weakens nodes above/below player into falling nodes,
		  e.g. loose cobble, gravel?
		- Steals items from player, drops onto ground or absorbs them
		  into body?  Saps tool durability?
		- Ignites flammables it passes by?
		- Downgrades or absorbs ores nearby by contact or air floodfill?
		- Creates illusionary nodes you can fall through?
	- Cannot be dug or damaged directly.
		- Digging it yields plain stone, but converts up to 2
		  surrounding stone nodes into Lurk.
	- Need to dig all around it so it cannot move, then apply Some
	  time-integrated process to convert it to useful form.

- Threats
	- Visceral
		- Flammable/toxic gas?
		- Monsters: stone-lurkers, mimics.
		- Lightning, meteor strikes?
	- Creeping
		- Cellular automata hazards.
		- From exploration, delving too deep, leaving things to rot, etc.
		- Blights, Fungi

- Social features
	- Randomize player appearance/colors.
		- Shirt/pants, possibly w/ stripes/patterns
		- Skin color, hair color, eye color?
	- Add more holiday outfits.
	- Track server lag in metadata?

- Make stone bricks or other building materials?
	- Pummel stone w/ lux+ pick?

- New materials to craft with.
	- Dungeon materials, stonework?
	- Decorations for dungeons
	- Tree sap from stumps? Resin? Rubber? Shellac?
	- Small plants? Reeds? Mallows?
	- Sea stars, anenome, coral, other underwater things?
	- Fungi, esp. tree-destroying ones, blight?
	- Oil, natural gas?  Fossils and fossil fuels?
	- Geode, hydra crystals, radioactives?
	- Shipwrecks or alien tech
	- Slow-moving animals? Snails? Miniature spice worms?
	- Non-portable things, like "spawners" or wormholes
	- Tubers and taproots, cacti, and other "defensive" plantlife
	- Plant-like CA animals, like bee nests and clouds of bees?
	  Termine mounds? Ant colonies? Coral?
	- Popeggcorn?
	- Ores that smelt via heating and then rapid quenching?
	- Things that cannot ever be dug, and must be moved only
	  by in-world machinery?

- Fancy hotbar.
	- Build hotbar texture dynamically from pieces and texturemods.
	- Inventory items can have a hotbar_texture associated with them to
	  override the default for that slot.
	- Make virtual items invisible on their own, use hotbar texture for them.
		- Injuries show torn/cracked slot.
		- Lux burns show partially melted slot.

- Vary player walking speed based on nodes under feet?

- Use gravity vector to make flowing water push the player?

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