Foreword: this post is based on my opinions on the current state of the Game Plans page. By no means do I intend to have any jurisdiction over Greg’s game, I just want to share my thoughts and provide constructive criticism.
Also, sorry for the wall of text.
Tickrate is something that will be less unified than in other Games. Things can have a slow and a fast tick rate depending on what they do. It will not be uncommon for things to have a Tickrate of 1 Tick per Second or even 1 Tick per Minute, or even just a specific delay Tick that only happens after some Block updated.
Tickrate should be unified, as it is an implementation detail. There should be a difference as to when things tick and when they trigger. Consider ExtraUtils pipes¹ as an example: by default, they tick each MC tick (50ms) but trigger (search locations) once per second.
In code, this is represented by a variable incremented each tick and reset each trigger, only triggering when the variable reaches a threshold.
Local Multiplayer is also possible thanks to the way I’m going to implement Controls, so that multiple Mice and Keyboards could be detected.
Will setting up a dedicated server be needed to play multiplayer on multiple computers in the same LAN network?
While I will try to avoid adding GUIs in general, I know for sure it is not 100% possible to do that.
I suggest using radial menus. They are more inmersion-friendly without being too hard to comprehend. Iirc there was a MC mod that added that to conflicting keybinds.
Keybinds
Just two small suggestions:
Make sure keys are detected in a physical way (i.e. the key 1 is registered as 1 even if a modifier like Shift is pressed). I use a custom layout with switched number row and I would not like to have to change game controls each time I reinstall the game. This would also help German players with Y/Z key issues.
Also make sure the <> key (between z and left shift) on Spanish keyboards is usable. It is a minor thing but it is often overlooked.
Default for the primary Hand are: Leftclick = whack , Rightclick = use , Left Ctrl or Right Ctrl = put , DEL or Q = chuck , Mousewheel Up/Down = rotate , END or E for swap and F or NUMPAD4 for action .
The Secondary Hand (usually the Left Hand) has: Forward (the 4th Mousebutton) = whack , Backward (the 5th Mousebutton) = use and the rest are not assigned by default
Some minor changes:
rotate should use Shift+MWheel, leaving ´MWheel´ to change items (like in standard MC), unless changing items uses a menu.
As for the second hand, I suggest defaulting non-bound, non-confilcting keybinds to Alt+<Primary Hand keybind>, example Alt+Left Click is whack with secondary hand.
For consistency with MC, swap should use F instead of E.
Items will have a Multi-Part Description to them, which is split into Categories
[…] (I might find a better way to handle Descriptors than a Wall of Text)
Instead of showing all descriptions at once add options to filter which ones to show or limit them to one at a time with controls to change between categories.
Yes some people use dots for the thousand-markers, and I don’t exactly know if I am gonna use Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera and Peta or if I’m gonna use other Symbols.
If the thousand marker is going to be a problem I suggest using SI guidelienes (whitespace for thousands, dot for decimal numbers).
In some cases it may be useful to have big numbers in exponential form (6.022 × 10^24) but using kilo, mega, etc for slightly smaller ones is preferable. Also a keybind to switch between the two of them would be useful, such as holding Shift would turn 2.2M into 2 200 215¹ or 15G into 1.5 × 10^10
¹ Rounding is acceptable, as otherwise using suffixes would not make sense.
Research and Technology System
A bit off-topic but I would like to have some kind of Thaumcraft-like magic in the game. Aspect-based crafting resulting in some helpful items, such as portable hole staves, or even weapons and damaging magic, enchanments and Skyrim-like spells like Spark or Frostbolt. Maybe even late-game alchemy allowing material transmuation to some extent.
This is in-between “normal” and “difficult” resource complexities but in a more abstract, concept-based sense: both iron and gold could have “metal” aspect but only the latter has “greed” in it; players could have different aspects based on the items they have, etc.
