Minecraft clone made with source sdk (steam)

If you want to do it, no one is really stopping you.

But part of what makes Minecraft so elegant and fun is its simplicity. It doesn't need shiny graphics to be a great game; it's the perfect example of function over form. Pretty games are great and all, but the second someone comes out with a great game made entirely of cubes why does everyone want to "upgrade" (and I use that word very loosely) it instead of appreciating it for what it is? I don't mean to be harsh, but you shouldn't try to ride on the coat-tails of Notch.

Minecraft was great because no one had done it before. If you made a Minecraft clone in Source everyone would say "been there, done that" and go back to playing Minecraft, and then you'll have wasted a year or more of your life developing a game no one will play. Its the same thing with World of Warcraft: everyone wants a piece of that pie, and so the MMO market is littered with WoW clones. The thing is, no one plays them because everyone who wants to play a game like WoW is already playing WoW. You'll have the same problem if you devote yourself to developing this game, and it'll suck when (if) you finish it and nobody bothers to even look at it.

The problem is that Source (like UDK) is oriented towards multiplayer play -- that means it thrives with not too many in-game entities (thousands tops) and mostly static levels.

Something like Minecraft needs its own specialized engine, unless you really water it down.

Pretty games are great and all, but the second someone comes out with a great game made entirely of cubes why does everyone want to "upgrade" (and I use that word very loosely) it instead of appreciating it for what it is? I don't mean to be harsh, but you shouldn't try to ride on the coat-tails of Notch.

First of all: It's not about upgrading it all of the time, it's more about the learning experience such as creating a fairly realistic(In shape) random world on the fly. Not to mention Minecraft created a whole sub-genre that people can create games in (Survival Sandbox World-Editor ), or should we all not ever use an already created genre and invent one?

Second: http://en.wikipedia....iding_coattails

I was thinking recently about a Minecraft-alike that uses a blend of planning modes and map editing to bring some of the neater elements of Minecraft into a less stylized game.

My first thought was the CryEngine, with its powerful map editing tools. Have an interface for designating map adjustments, and then an in-game mechanic for implementing them. So you'd designate an area from the map editor for excavation or construction, a la Dwarf Fortress, and then players in-game could interact with the job markers to modify the map. You could level a bit of rough terrain, build a road, erect a few structures or expand a cave system in the editor, but those effects would only appear as "plans", and then you or another player would have to go to the site in first-person mode and either expend resources or perform some task in order to actually alter the map.

I think about this often, as a player of both MineCraft and Dwarf Fortress, and I have a lot of half-baked ideas about how cooperative projects could be done. A lot of neat issues regarding leadership roles, democracy, economy etc. come up, and it's certainly worth exploring. Even in a single-player environment, though, there's a lot to be learned from MineCraft and the sandbox genre is poised for a big surge forward.

By all means, investigate this idea further, learn all you can, and show us what you can do with it.

Could Source be used to replace the cubes with "nodes", that allow a terrain's shape and composition to the defined similar to voxels? If you could have a few million of these nodes, and your engine could render them as a fully customizable terrain with a heightmap and even structural physics, you'd be on track to produce a very impressive game world that takes a lot of cues from MineCraft without being restricted to the block-editing format that game uses.

Some perks over minecraft might be arbitrary shapes of blocks. Most model counts are low because most models have many trianges and texture dots, however source engine should be able to draw many low-rez cubes. Optimazation code will be necessary (similar to minecraft, possibly by ownly spawning blocks as necessary and unloading distant or obstructed blocks)....and perks include easy inclusion of physics so the trees look better, and the option of using non-block shapes and linking them with physics or other code and making a much neater game, sort of like how quake rode on the coattails of doom.

Edit: Sorry about spelling, been playing zombies (left 4 dead 2) with ppl in 4-player co-op normal mode and it was really fun, lots of zombies and fun interactions with the other players, one in particular. ;p Zombies is a source game (I think, sdk looks familiar....), been playing it with 3d glasses, looks like they ported the "aim" code for fast aims pretty good, but the crosshair/slow aim doesn't work, and other players playing without glasses feel like they're using aimbots instead of aiming when they're using the crosshair for a weird mixed focus effect, so you should all buy 3d glasses now. Also fast reflex aiming is mandatory with the 3d glasses currently in zombies, however most games support the new 3d glasses laser crosshair, and I'm getting a new 6-core mobo/proc from newegg for $270 hopefully soon to go with my 460 and nvidia 3d vision. The graphics improvements are impressive, and it also grants gecko-like eye focus multiple target planes skill with the bitmap screen layer nametags.

I thought of another idea for a minecraft update, maybe put in the world of warcraft / mmo recipe system for crafting the mined block drops along with a recipe obtainment system (one perk of lots of clones is that each one can try different implementation specifics to advance the genre and field and scatter around/mutate into popular specifics giving lots of people a boost of cash and tons of market innovation and quality), and also it might be neat to make much nicer cubes, perhaps making the dirt cubes bump mapped and whatnot. In addition to the terrain/environment elemental (mix) cubes, there might be arbitrarily shaped non-cube models such as players that are or resemble the models from popular source games. Also I think the source sdk is free on steam, which is also free, and works good with the free version of microsoft visual C++ 2010 express. It might also be neat to have a crafting system where the player can convert elemental terrain cubes and natural tree parts (also plants & animals) into a variety of 3d model based items that are not cubes and may already be partially or fully modeled in the source code, or add code when necessary. It might also be neat to make craftable items that can deform other models, like a hammer item that squishes certain models with some controls.

....Minecraft was great because no one had done it before....

Err what?


Infiniminer

Its the same thing with World of Warcraft: everyone wants a piece of that pie, and so the MMO market is littered with WoW clones. The thing is, no one plays them because everyone who wants to play a game like WoW is already playing WoW.

But Blizzard did the exact thing, they cloned the already existing overused genre. They reached for the pie and took it almost whole Probably because they improved their clone to be better than the original, but still...