Gameplay Concepts
A volume with a planar surface, and perpendicular to a voxel axis.
Has a small amount noise-based elevation differences.
Many features are directly accessed from this.
Generally made out of weak material, at least near the surface.
There is an ongoing discussion on whether there should be multiple of these.
Images:
Consists of a stalk growing upwards, and at a regular interval, branches form from some of the four grid-aligned directions perpendicular to the stalk. Each branch acts like a stalk in that regard too, making it's own branches.
Stalk generation probability:
- Each of the four directions could have an independent probability of generating
- Each junction could always generate a set number of stalks, like three.
The trees don't have to be fully infinite, finite would probably be more interesting.
Needs a better name.
Square horoprism extending fair distance into the sky. Around 64-block diameter at base. Has empty volume, all interesting gameplay takes place on the walls.
The load-bearing part of the wall is one block thick, and made of temple stone.
The walls have randomly generated protrusions and other goodies made out of concrete for upward navigation. Both the inside and outside of the wall have these, and the temple stone part of the wall occasionally has holes in it that allow the player to cross between the inside and the outside.
Ground-level floor:
- There could be a ground-level floor that give the tower a bottom.
- The tower could keep on extending downwards forever on the interior.
The inside of a square horoprisim would look like this:
A hole in the ground that carved out by a random-walk-simulating algorithm like that used in Hyperrogue's Brown Island.
The area directly under an intensely bright ideal-point sun. The farther you go into it, the more hot and bright it gets, and the less life that is seen. Underground is a little safer, but staying there too long can cause you to overheat.
If the ground in this area was shaped like a horoball crater(all points tangent to the sun), then there could be a large area with the same sunlight intensity. A small horoball
In some places, certain aspects of gameplay will periodically vary over time.
- Could be based on a single cycle.
- Could have multiple cycles each determining different things, with different periods.
The sky periodically gets brighter and dimmer in places exposed to an equidistant canopy.
- Could bring out dangerous creatures, encouraging the player to build shelter
Every seventeen minutes, a swarm of enemies hatches, and wrecks havoc on the environment for a minute, then lays eggs that will hatch in another 17 minutes. These creatures are constrained to reproduce only in certain environmental conditions.
A shameless rip-off of the core concept of Rain World
There is a main land in the game where the player starts, resembling different parts of earth. There are fluctuating environmental factors that determine generation.
Locally each factor is independent, but the parent factors will affect the first or second derivatives.
The frequency of the perlin noise. More Bumpiness means the hills are less flat.
How high the ground should be at this point.
Changes the types of plant life and fauna appearing here.
If a river exists, it will connect from the highest water flow gradient to the lowest.
A measure of how good the nutrients in the ground are for plant life. Changes the types of plant life and fauna appearing here.
Increases the chance of seeing rivers. If this is negative, then water is generated instead of land.
Determines what kind of topsoil soil exists here. High loaminess generates clay, the lowest loaminess generates gravel.
Higher civilization increases the chance of finding common manufactured structures.
Determines how quickly the above environmental factors will fluctuate.
- chaos
- loaminess
- fertility
- civilization
- Bumpiness
- local elevation -> humidity
- Closeness to water
- water flow gradient
- humidity
- civilization
For PC, each hand is tied to a mouse button, and clicking will trigger a "use" for that hand. The result of using a hand depends on what is equipped in it. If the hand is open, then it will reach out and attempt to grab whatever is on the crosshair. If there is a tool equipped, it will be swung at the target. While holding the mouse button, the character will attempt to keep the tool/hand at the location of it's target. If the hand has a good grip, or the tool sticks in the material, then it will grant a mobility bonus to the player based on the strength of the bond. Unclicking brings the hand/tool back.
To climb a ladder, one would follow this sequence of actions:
- Grab a rung with one hand.
- Look up and push the forward button to move upwards.
- Grab another higher rung with other hand.
- Disengage former hand.
- Repeat steps 2-4
Climbing by clicking and holding on a climbable surface while empty-handed, then using movement inputs as usual.
High friction, very breakable, incredibly easy to climb with tools, reasonably easy to climb with bare hands.
Already one of the materials rendered. Could be physics based, like Minecraft, or it could be more like kinetic sand and have some measure of adhesion.
Generates in Trees. Can be used to make basic tools and can be crafted into building material when combined with any type of adhesive.
Generates on the exterior of extremely large trees. Compared to regular wood, is much more climbable, much easier to harvest without tools, and makes worse tools (if at all).
Very tough material. Completely unclimbable. Not unbreakable mid-game, but enough of a hassle that it heavily incentivizes players to find ways around. Used in the foundations of large-scale civilization-made structures
Similar material properties to Cave Stone, but is found in artificially made structures.
The gravitational force is directed perpendicular to the ground-plane and has a magnitude of constant/cosh(y)^2, where y is the distance from the ground measured in absolute units.
Note that at an elevation of one absolute unit, the gravity would be at 40% strength.
The gravitational force is directed perpendicular to the ground-plane and has a constant magnitude.
Ideas for making sun-like illumination in 3D hyperbolic space. For information on why they would behave as they do in hyperbolic space see the theory section of the wiki.
A sun that is infinitely far away from the player. Either as a point source, or a very small disk.
A fundamental issue with this method is that just one sun will cover a very small amount of ground.
Make the sun extremely bright, and create a sunny wasteland directly under it.
Suns are regularly placed around the sky, like Hyperrogue's Vineyard.
A uniformly luminous equidistant surface above the ground.
Working around the exponential dimming by scattering light sources everywhere. Moving light sources could simulate a sunrise and sunset.
Justifies ambient light. Needs higher quality ambient occlusion to look significantly better than naive ambient light, which is difficult and expensive to implement, but maybe tractible: voxel cone tracing gives great results for more complex scenes in cutting edge games, and we can skip the voxelization step. Could vary intensity between nodes, though variable fog is expensive. Harder to justify why you can see very far through a fog that's bright enough to illuminate its surroundings; maybe everything's fluorescent?
Light follows lines perpendicular to the ground plane. Analogous to Minecraft's sunlight, but has significant differences due to hyperbolic geometry: the irradiance on a surface drops off exponentially wrt. distance away from the ground plane, in either direction. Provides diverse lighting conditions, but is tricky to justify. Plays well with volumetric lighting. Unclear if shadowmapping can apply.