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Screenshot of the world (2023-02)
An open explorable environment where people can host their own builds and activities.
Sandbox games tend to have a single avatar of the player, who both explores the world and builds things in it, which are stored on some central server.
Conversely, games with a modding scene allow people to create new in-game experiences by working outside the game universe. These generally involve altering or rewriting the client, so modded
games have limited ability to affect the experience for other users.
The model I want to try out is somewhere in between. Players can explore the world, but things built in it are hosted on creators' Web sites. There is no central server: players control what they see in the world through a list of subscriptions.
I had some guff here about why this idea is new, but I haven't researched it thoroughly, so it probably isn't.
I'm interested in platforms as settings: distinct environments in which different ideas can be envisioned. From this perspective, I'm not actually all that bothered if there is a game as such there. You could call it a reaction to the enclosure of the mainstream Web, but unlike the historical enclosures, we don't need to live in the space that's been taken from us: there are limitless new lands to inhabit.
On a Web server, there's no "space between" pages. You navigate directly from one to another, like a series of rooms connected by doors (or teleporters, if you prefer.) Here there is a large space managed by the server, in which user interventions exist. So there also needs to be a default exploration activity provided by the platform.
Entering the arena of a specific activity can be deliberate, like entering a building in an RPG and seeing the inside open up. But in this project you'll be able to see the contents at all times. This can also serve as a way for explorers to discover new experiences.
OK, but it's a Linux binary which I haven't tested anywhere. You'll definitely need
User interventions are stored in the folder `civ` (for "civilisation", naturally.)
If any square chunk in the game world is either solid rock or solid space, you can replace it by putting files in the `civ` folder tree, specifying the world coordinates of the chunk in the filename.
You can use any structure for the folders under `civ`: if any folders there are git repositories, the game will do a git pull on startup.
The idea of this is that builders can publish their interventions on github or somewhere like that, and to see them in game you can clone the repo into `civ`, and it'll stay up to date.
At the minute you can only make chunks consisting of bits of wall and empty space, and there's no player to actually interact with them.
TODO: largish procedural builds (based on provisional chunks)
TODO: different roughnesses over large scales
TODO: move chunk management into a plugin
TODO: move build management into a plugin?
TODO: an easy way for builders to find the coordinates of a chunk
TODO: player
TODO: flocking?
