I have been working on a minecraft mod pack that has a mechanic where the player can fly between different worlds via the elytra. eg. the overworld -> moon -> mars etc. I have a few different directions I can take Mars’ design:
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Dead world with remnants of the extinct martian civilization. Environmental storytelling used to convey a mystery to be solved by the player
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HG Wells’ war of the worlds inspired with the martian statues referencing their 3 colored pupiled eyes on a villager model and red weed plants growing underground that infect plants like trees and spread on corrupted dirt (basically dirt that has had blood within 4 blocks of it) and eventually turns white and dies if its in one of the overworld dimensions
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harmless/benevelant living martians based on the barsoon series
Or some combination of those
Thoughts?
Sounds cool, honestly. No feedback, just well-wishes.
Thanks.
The space part of the pack is based on an old DnD campaign I was in where the whole solar system was breathable and accessible without the need for advanced technology. i.e basically medieval steampunk. The planets and moons are inspired by old scifi stories before modern observations. eg. Venus is a jungle/swamp planet, Mars either has or had intelligent life underground, space carp under the ice of europa, a moon orbiting a gas giant that manages to sustain life via volcanic vents providing warmth far from the sun etc. There is A LOT more to it but this is what the player can expect after killing the enderdragon allows the elytra to be obtained.
This is what Mars looks like atm. The dirt and stone are textured based on real NASA photos of Martian soil and rock. The white that you see is snow (aesthetic choice to show Mars is very cold)
Could this be done in minetest?
I have no idea what the state of modding is for minetest.
I’ve not done it myself, but apparently it’s supposed to be pretty simple.
Seems interesting. I can see the argument for any option, but I think what would be most interesting is to see which one would introduce the most unique gameplay that isn’t already present in the base game. And for that, I think I’d lean towards the second option.
I’ve always been a fan of the idea of a truly dynamic landscape, where if you visit the same location at 2 different times, the location would look different. Trees might have grown or died, flowers spread on their own, sheep hunted to extinction by wolves. That kind of stuff.
It sounds like the second option is most similar to that idea, where the infection spreads on its own. Though, you may have to do some balancing to make sure that the infection doesn’t just spread through the entire world and that the other “biomes” have a way of reclaiming lost land
The initial design of the red weed would require contaminated soil or a tree/large mushroom to grow on. So the player would either have to be the one to contaminate the soil to farm it or allow it to spread through very densely packed trees that physically contact one another likely again requiring the player to set up the conditions for that spread to happen. I thought of letting it just spread without those conditions but I think it might be better to have it only spread because of something the player did so it doesnt irreversibly destroy the whole continent it is introduced to. But… if it spread slowly enough, it could still be contained at almost any stage of that infection.
Maybe add a weaker version of the red weed which doesn’t spread and already generates, then add a version which the player can make spread?
I added structures that contain liquid blood as decoration/ambiance and pools of blood in the nether dimension variants (there are 3 in total: caves, surface and floating islands) so that could corrupt soil which then corrupts the red weed to make it spread like a disease. All 3 of these would be from different dimensions and would never interact without the player’s purposeful actions.
The corrupted red weed would spread a carpet over grass etc. that would occasionally spawn more red weed like mushrooms do. Destroying the carpeting would be easy and because it isnt converting the grass blocks, it isnt actually destroying anything other than the trees/mushroom blocks that it consumes. OR I could make it merely generate red vines that cover them.
I wonder how flying on Elytra would be like with the upside-down world 😇.
Take a look at the game Nightingale. You can use cards to combine “Forest, Desert, and Swamp” - with other attributes like “Blood Moon”, “Fae Wilds”, “Industrial” (makes the map foggy, gets boosts to crafting), “Quarry”, etc.; unless of course your scope is only mars.
Personally the thing that stands out for me in a dimension world is when there’s something meaningful to actually do there
All well and good getting to the moon in space mods, but once you’ve got whatever ore is unique to ths moon and maybe built a base for the fun of it you’re kinda done
Aliens at all wouldn’t have crossed my mind, as, to the best of our knowledge, Mars is a dead world. Do you have aliens on any of the other celestial bodies?
These planets are not meant to be realistic. Venus is themed like classic scifi depictions before modern observations revealed it to be a hell planet. i.e it is a swampy jungle world with life that would belong in the era of Earth’s dinosaurs.
Europa has a subsurface ocean that I plan to add primitive swimming mobs to.
Persephone (gas giant) has a moon orbiting it that sustains life via volcanic vents and the like. Completely dark but still full of life.
Mercury, Jupiter’s other moons and titan are dead.
Mars could go either way. Either a dead planet that used to sustain life and no longer does or continues to sustain life but rarely and underground.
These planets and moons are supposed to be interesting and a completely realistic portrayal would not fit the pack’s design goals.
