Sharing and creating a world, with what?

[Tomahawkthedragon]

Since minecraft, I must say, I love creating world, trying architectural ideas. But now, I have a little problem, I want to invest myself in something nice, big and easy to share. The only problem, I don't know which game is the best for this. Oh, and Second life don't interest me. Too glitchy and it feel weird. So, here is what i already tried.

Minecraft.
(Here is a video from me making a timelaps)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFVejoUDTAQ
I know this game is far from perfect. Optimisation problem and using Java for a massif game like this... But for most of the computers, the performances are okay, I can make an infinite world, the community is huge, MCedit is realy nice to create, copy and paste chunks and bits of maps.
But, The game have his limitation. Going vanilla (No mods) make the game a bit repetitive, not enough materia to create a lot of style. And, the fog distance is a bit small, it's hard to make an epic view of a large work without an external software.

There is other games that look like minecraft that could be interesting too.
Blockscape, an Alpha game that is slowly showing potencial.
(oups... during this bit, i went to check what was the language the game was written in... C# using XNA platform and XNA has stop any developpement... u-u)

Spoiler

What is realy nice with this one, first, the graphics are nicer, The lightning give the opportunity to give more nice effects (Colored Lightning).
But... The game is still in alpha and is too early in his developpement to be stable. It can crash a lot for no reason. And even without the crash problems, The controles are not that good. The caracter is slow and can easely clip and stuck himself (due to some polygones placed wrong by the procedural generated terrain) and the interface need work.

I though of maybe mapping for Hafl-life 2, but the maps are too heavy and it's a bit hard to share that kind of thing, due to the massives ressources it needs to work.


So... yeah. I'm asking to myself, should i continue with minecraft, of go for another game with another engine to try something different, have better result visualy and continue to be as easy to share the things i do.

[Pr0nogo]

Run away from Minecraft with your tony between your legs and find an actual game.

Also, just because something is in alpha doesn't mean it has to be buggy or unstable. If something's as buggy as unstable as you make Blockscape out to be, I wouldn't consider it an alpha. I'd consider it unplayable.

[Tomahawkthedragon]

Yeah... but now, i'm back to my question, which game to take that can share a world with less limitations possible. And, i often heard bad things about minecraft, justified, but... i don't realy understand them.

For instance, i know that Java is seriously not a good choise for programming such game because of his limitations (I don't realy know them so i can only learn on them)
And maybe some programming design choise that somebodies can find dirty and unoptimise.
But, from what i experienced, i do apreciate this game. Minecraft has a kind of liberty that put hisself at risk so the player can do everything he want, even if it's risky. Some 3A games have some kind of limitation so the game don't overload and crash. For instance, Sims 3. The game will not let you have a bigger terrain than 64x64 to build on simply because it's too much, not because they decided that number randomly. But minecraft don't put limits, letting the possibility to do what ever with the game. Putting limitation on a game some times make me feel like the developpers did not had the time to correct the problem of over-loading an engine, so they limit the player's possibilites to avoid reaching that point.

But don't forget, i'm not skilled in programmation and in game design, i'm learning right now and trying do be a bit more clever, seeing possibilites in games that can be usefull for futur project, so if i'm wrong somethere, don't be shy, i do want to know why i should avoid minecraft, like Pr0nogo said (He's not the first one to say this so there must be something i don't know here).

And to open the topic for more discution, which game do you think would be the best at creating whole worlds and having has much possibilites as a Sandbox game.

[Lavarinth]

If you like Minecraft, play it. About half a dozen to a dozen of us are on a server here that I host.

[Tomahawkthedragon]

Yeah you're probably right. I just wanted some advice and some share-science thigny a bit :3.

[mark_009_vn]

UDK...

[Chriso]

a

[Tomahawkthedragon]

The only downside of Minecraft is the lack of Shader, it's not easy to put a 3D model in the game as an object, and i don't know how to mod for now (and Every version need the mods to be updated) but seems to be the easiest way to share worlds for now.

[mark_009_vn]

The only downside of Minecraft is the lack of Shader, it's not easy to put a 3D model in the game as an object, and i don't know how to mod for now (and Every version need the mods to be updated) but seems to be the easiest way to share worlds for now.

If you are doing it as a hobby, then just stick to Minecraft or something. If you are really serious about making a mod, then maybe consider Source or UDK. Don't be scared about distributing them, there are plenty of sites out there that allow you to upload maps, example: FPSB.

But one thing to note, the way HL-2 handles maps is very archaic, and Hammer is a piece of shit. Be prepared for alot of trouble shooting with compiling errors.

...I don't even know what's Minecraft is, but I can already tell you can make better terrain in DOOM.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

From what I heard from someone supposely proficient with Source, Source has the issue that it often update every week thus it can easily break your stuff thus having to re-fix it constantly.

[mark_009_vn]

From what I heard from someone supposely proficient with Source, Source has the issue that it often update every week thus it can easily break your stuff thus having to re-fix it constantly.

The Mac update alone made 99.9% of all mods that is not based on the Ep1 or Ep2 engine totally unplayable. Valve is becoming more like Blizzard every day!

[IskatuMesk]

Source has map size limits outside of licenses from what I remember. That may have changed in semi-recent times as that is what stopped me from looking deeper into it back in the Alpha Eclipse days (2005ish). Havok's performance is also... abhorrent.

[mark_009_vn]

Source has map size limits outside of licenses from what I remember. That may have changed in semi-recent times as that is what stopped me from looking deeper into it back in the Alpha Eclipse days (2005ish). Havok's performance is also... abhorrent.

Source map size limit is like 1km square or something right about now (if I remembered correctly thats 50.000 Hammer units, don't know, hardly ever touched Hammer, all the mapping I ever did was done solely on txts). I don't think they ever up the limit since game release, the engine wasn't made to handle large open maps in the first place.

The biggest advantage of Source is that it is heavily optimized for low end computers, but aside from that the engine is pretty outdated.

[wibod]

Source has map size limits outside of licenses from what I remember. That may have changed in semi-recent times as that is what stopped me from looking deeper into it back in the Alpha Eclipse days (2005ish). Havok's performance is also... abhorrent.

Source map size limit is like 1km square or something right about now (if I remembered correctly thats 50.000 Hammer units, don't know, hardly ever touched Hammer, all the mapping I ever did was done solely on txts). I don't think they ever up the limit since game release, the engine wasn't made to handle large open maps in the first place.

The biggest advantage of Source is that it is heavily optimized for low end computers, but aside from that the engine is pretty outdated.

This is the most important thing about stock source. If you're willing to take the time to modify source it can do wide open areas sort of ok (dark messiah) but usually it just lags like a bitch (vtmb).

[mAc Chaos]

Did someone say mac update.