Sorry for the general silence. Since we’re waiting on Forge to update to 1.3.x I’m taking a break from Mystcraft. I’m still answering questions and active on the Bug Tracker and IRC, but I’m not working on Mystcraft at the very moment.
Designs for spaceman have been moving along. Lots of things to decide on. Some of the ideas in the project are a bit ambitious and I want to design it so that they can be done either simply at first and improved upon later or simply done later without needing to rewrite everything else later, too. 😉
The plan for spaceman development is as follows:
- Main Designs – try to get everything specified and planned out as best I can. I’m paying particular attention to having a discrete, modular, and maintainable architecture at this point.
- Project Environment Setup – Putting together my workspace and procedures. I want to try to get most of the workflows laid out at this point, including the testing and build systems. Focus is on automation of workflow and project structure.
- Initial Test System – Build the base architecture and communication systems. This is the framework and core phase. Mostly interfaces and abstractions.
- Initial ‘Playable’ – Hopefully the result of the previous phase is a ‘playable’ system which can be used to start testing mechanics and content. If not then that is the goal here.
- Game Content/Mechanics – Start work on the heart and meat of the game.
At this point I switch to a very iterative model where I basically continue adding, reworking, refactoring, and revising the system. I’ll try to give updates as stuff happens at this point, and there will probably be screenshots/casts of the first playable. 🙂
Hope you are enjoying the Summer!
I know your taking a break from mystcraft, but how long would it take you to also release a version of mystcraft that was compatible with 160 or something higher than that? Some mods need 160+ and would be nice to be able to use them without dropping mystcraft. ty 🙂
Can’t wait to see what your making xcomp, keep it up, maybe post some screenshots when you can =D.
Mystcraft gave me a neat idea that I want to pitch to you. It shouldn’t take too much time, since you’ve already done most (all?) of the work.
In a nutshell: Decay SMP. All it does is generate decay blocks in the overworld. Nothing more. That way, in SMP, people have the added challenge of having to stick together and constantly be on the move to outrun the world decaying. Outside of that, could we have an ‘enable overworld decay’ feature in Mystcraft? I think a lot of people would really like this kind of challenging twist on survival mode.
@Iconoclast You could have players spawn in a closed room that only has a portal to a decaying world as the exit. The problem with the idea is: what about players who log off or even new players? The decay gets to the point that they can’t spawn near the original group and they’re screwed (going with the whole sticking together thing that is.) I think it’s something that could be worked around with teleports and a safe zone to spawn in when you first step into the decay world. Might be fun… 🙂