======================================================================== NONIDEAS: Ideas already considered and rejected ------------------------------------------------------------------------ #### ##### #### # # ###### ##### #### # # # # # # # # # # # #### # # # # # # ##### # # #### # ##### # # # # # ##### # # # # # # # # # # # # # #### # #### # ###### ###### # # #### - Anything Already Added - If something already exists in the game then it will not be added. Please play though the game enough to understand what is already in the game before making suggestions. - Things that are ALMOST like things already in the game will not be added. Players are expected to adapt their ideas to the materials available, not the other way around. - Anything Explicitly Removed - If something previously existed in the game, but was explicitly removed, then it was removed for a good reason and will not be re-added. - Suggestions to reverse removals must meet a high standard for comelling evidence, including an understanding of the context and reasons for the original removal. - Copying From Other Games - A game element added to NodeCore needs to be able to justify its existence purely in the context of NodeCore. - The presence of an element in another game is not compelling evidence it should exist in this one, even if the element is a useful enhancing feature of that other game. - Mobs/Animals - Things that are "off-grid" are discouraged. Node-based "staybs" could at least fit the mechanics, but entity-based creatures that move freely do not. Use of /clearobjects should not remove key gameplay elements as long as the game is allowed to "quiesce" first. - Monsters that are easy to understand and deal with would not fit the games theme or play style. Threats need to be subtle, insidious, and indirect. Threats that offer no direct cathartic response (i.e. bashing it to death) also fit the theme better, as well as threats that can be turned around and exploited as resources once mastered (but remain a threat if handled carelessly). - NodeCore pacing requires that dangers to a player should be consequences of the player's own decisions, and not something that can be blamed on environment or chance. Having monsters spawn spontaneously and stalk the player would be problematic. - NodeCore "conservation" mechanics discourage having things spawn spontaneously at all, and they would need to be part of mapgen. - Food/Hunger - Players are like ethereal beings who visit the world only temporarily and are not subject to injury or survival mechanics within the world. - Things that focus a mechanic on/through the player do not fit the world-centric/node-centric theme of the game. - Using food items to provide things like temporary buffs is likely to be a lot of effort and likely to be skipped by most players. - Day/Night Cycle - Previously existed, was removed. - Was only ever of cosmetic value while it existed. - Only ever useful for powering lenses by skylight, but that violated the game's principle of action only being dependent on the state of things and their local surroundings, not on specific times or places. - Interfered with gameplay by forcing players to take measures to skip night (waiting, or begging for beds, see below) until they had achieved reliable artificial lighting. It was not useful to compel players to develop lighting because darkness underground was already sufficient for that. - Health, Death, and Respawn - Previously existed, was removed. - Only ever included because it was provided by the engine/built-in, but it never provided any justification for its existence. - Only ever distracted from gameplay and design. Health had no effect other than death, and death was never more than an inconvenience at worst. Attempts to make taking damage disadvantageous e.g. by slowing walking speed were only ever annoying and tedious. - Death respawn could easily be exploited as a form of teleportation, which was convenient under many circumstances, and nerfed the threat of becoming lost or falling into darkness, removing a lot of compelling reasons for players to put attention into the game. - Beds - There is no night to skip, and players have no need for sleep. - Bed-like structures can be made out of existing nodes. Purely decorative elements that are not fungible do not fit the game's design. - Music - Minetest engine only technically supports music, but it doesn't work smoothly. - Music would increase the download size of the game, and correspondingly the media transfer time on joining servers, but a decimal order of magnitude and is not worth it, even at the lowest quality settings. - Players often prefer playing their own music, and can just play other music with another media player in background. - Music is generally problematic for streamers and even music that is supposedly freely-licensed sometimes ends up in content fingerprint databases for automatic copyright strikes. In theory this is not exclusive to music, but its prevalence in music already is a big problem. - Revert Item Stack Pickup Control - Without this feature, it's very difficult to control which slot an item goes into, making it hard or impossible to pack the hotbar the way the player wants. - Without this feature, it's difficult or impossible to split stacks and pick them up while keeping them split. ........................................................................ ========================================================================