MINEFALL
========

Minefall is a survival game. Its signature feature is the ability
for players to "fly" if they have enough mana. Actually, the feature is called
"levitation" and is a similar to "jetpacks" that one can find in other games.
Another distinct feature is the use of ranged weapons (wands) that have various
interesting effects.

The game has no particular goal, though a prerequisite is to survive because
most mobs are hostile and dangerous, especially in numbers. However, the game
has been designed so that players can specialize in fighting (PvE/PvP),
trading, mining, exploration or building and farming.

Although the game has been designed with multiplayer in mind, it is fairly playable
alone. Some things are a lot easier, but on the other hand the player cannot
rely on trade, so sometimes the player will have to wait for things to happen
unless they manage their activities very well.

Below is a description of the many aspects of the game. I chose to present it as
a lexicon or dictionary. Of course, it is full of SPOILERS.

Entries are surrounded by '+' (e.g. +LICENSE+) to ease search, references use
a single '+' (e.g. +weather). Entries are always in singular form and allcaps
while references may sometimes be in plural form.

Please note that as this file contains a lot of info and as I have tuned things
 lot, some info may be inaccurate or simply false.

+ABERRANT+ (tree)

Aberrant trees are giant trees made of two or three random materials. They can
be grown by makeing an aberrant tree sapling.
They are intended to be both "city trees", as each tree is unique, and lotery
tickets, because the materials can be either common or uncommon.
Those trees can bring prosperty or calamity: among them are the copper tree
and the lava tree.

+ADMINISTRATION+

Contrary to many visitors I had on my test server, I don't want to be a moderator
or an "admin", I want to play this game. So I tried to minimize these tasks
and even make them part of the game. To the point that active players can
invite or revoke the invitation of other players (see +RP).

+ADVANCED+ (player)

See +veteran (player)

+ANCHORSTONE+

"Anchorstone" is the name of the mod that provided the base feature. In-game,
they are usually refered to as "dungeon beacons".
As the name suggests, they are a type of beacon found in dungeons.

They can picked up by players and placed somewhere else, then be used as
teleporters to their original location.  Anchorstones therefore allow player
to build teleportation networks, making dungeons more attractive places.  The
game does not prevent players from picking up inactive anchors with a
obsidian shards.

Due to the clan "twist", it's actually two teleportations networks that are
created: Men's and Women's.

+ANVIL+

The anvil is in the game primarily in order to add something to do during
nights. It is sort of a mini game where players have to optimize their
throughput. It can be accelerated using armor (mana regen helmets) or food
(using +overeat).
On the paper it is also a way to "produce" metal: repairing a piece of armor
wears out a new hammer, which means that one has spent some metal (to make a
hammer). Given the cost of the hammer, some repairs are totally not worth it
(anything bronze, for instance).

+AUTOMATION+

I did not wish to include automation mods (Mesecon, hoppers, etc.) because +MF
is mainly an action game, and it is players that should act, not their machines.
Furthermore it is an incentive to employ other players to do the boring tasks,
hence stimulating trade and interactions.

+BEACON+

Beacons can be obtained by trading with NPCs.
Players can set their "home" by feeding a green mese crystal to a beacon, and
they can teleport to it by feeding it a diamond.
Beacons are subject to the Men/Women clan divide: players can only use a
beacon set by a player of the same clan, although the home of all new players
will be the first beacon placed by Singleplayer (or the server admin). If a
player changes its home, they won't be able to set it back to this beacon,
though.
If a player removes a beacon, homes associated to it remain valid.

See also +anchorstone.

+BEGINNER+ (player)

In +MF, this is the level just above +guest - it is kind of a guest with
interaction.

From the game design perspective, beginners are a problem because they don't
have much and therefore cannot do much. This leads to a "slow start" when we
would rather want a "fast start" to make the game engaging - commercial games
and other F2P games keep a close look on the "first hour experience".

The game does not try to solve this problem. It is up to the players (in
particular +veterans, the highest level) to make it engaging.

+BELIEVABLE+

... Is a word I use instead of "realistic". Sometimes players insist that things
should be realistic, but in my opinion it is a) expensive b) not always fun
and c) how a game made with cubes could possibly be realistic anyway?
The "not fun" is the most important point. Being able to carry 500 logs is not
realistic, but restricting players to one or two logs, or simulating weight,
is a deal-breaker.

+BIOMES+

+MF's biomes used to be MTG's biomes with few modifications, but as I have
continually changed them, now they look similar - all but the palm tree come
from MTG - but are different in a number of ways.

The icesheet is gone. It's "place" was split between the taiga biome (wet/very
cold) and the tundra biome (dry/very cold).
The taiga features frozen water sheets (without a snow layer). It also
features layers of slate.
The base stone for the tundra biome is basalt. This is the place to go if you
want tin, and more importantly, lava blobs can be found near level 0.
The swamp biome has giant grass and "springs". This a place where players can
do some inland farming. The base stone is limestone, which does not include
any ore. However, there are some grey stone "blobs" where one can find some or
coal.
This is also the feature of the two other "green" biomes, the deciduous forest
and plain. Green biome usually provide enough food to survive, but are not a
good place for mining.
Dry dirt plains usually border savannas or desert. It is baren biome without
food and not too much bugs. The base stone is the common grey, which makes it
a good place to mine underground.
All forrests are significantly less dense than in +MTG and there are a lot
more logs lying on the ground. One reason is that forrests naturally grow by
the action of the bugs that turn plant into saplings (often in two steps:
plant -> bush sapling -> tree sapling). The other reason is to match the ruins
- an affordance to build a story on "something bad happened here".

Around 75 m underground starts the basalt layer with its lava blobs. There's
no way to detect them except sound.
Arount 75 m above level 0 starts the "snow peaks" biome - unless the biome
below can occupy the place. Most forests biomes stop at 50 m. Between 50 and
75, a gravel biome fills the gap.

Dungeons have been customized in each biomes, some are the unique source of
certain blocks (red bricks for instance).

+BOOKSHELVES+

Why so many bookshelves? Three reasons:
- it is only a matter of puting one overlay texture on the different types of
  planks, so it is relatively cheap.
- Add some diversity to furniture, adapt to the various interior decoration
  styles (a pine wood shelf on top of a pine wood floor is a bit sad).
- They can be hidden in floors, thus providing protection and the furniture
  block that activates (wrt +traders) cloth blocks in a stealth way. It helps
  with making protected beds, chairs or tables.

Shelve are not book-only storages like in +MT. In +FF it would not make much
sense. At some point they acted as locked chests; but that looked a bit weird,
and overlapping. So given their relatively cheap price (for a furniture) and
their other advantages, I decide to make them purely decorative.

+BUTTERFLY+

Butterflies bring life in the world day and night by emitting light sometimes,
but they are not just decorative mobs.
Their main function is to transform flowers to saplings. Each flower gives
a different kind of sapling.
Their secondary function is to serve as "fuel" for the +hives.

+CACTUS+

Cactus are IRL sort of like "water tanks", that's why they usually need spikes
to protect themselves from thirsty animals (some are toxic too). However when
dried, they do provide wood-like material. Another property is that for some
of them, a detached part can grow into a new cactus (it's not an
uncommon property for plants, though).
So in MF, I made the only source of sticks that can be reliably renewed.
Unlike the MTG cliché, one can grow them outisde of deserts and on plain soil.

+CAT+

Cats are an item of loot crates.
They don't jump because it often leads to dumb-looking behaviors.
Purely decorative. They don't do shit otherwise, like IRL.

+CANCELLATION+ (damage)

TODO: needs update.

Damage cancellation is the fact that incoming damage is reduced to 1 HP.
Additionally a 1 HP hit in general does not damage the armor.
All armor pieces except for the +Strange metal ones provide some % damage
cancellation chance. This replaces the original damage reduction implementation.

The reason for this replacement is that in +MT players can only have 20 HP
maximum (this was made modifiable well after I started +MF), and is a discreet
value: you cannot have 12.5 HP, which is what would happen if 3 points of
damage was reduced by 50% by armor.

The traditional damage reduction doesn't work well in +MT. If a player has 51%
damage reduction and a rat bites them for 1 damage, nothing happens,
because the damage after the reduction is below 1, and MT rounds it to zero.
It might make sense that if you wear armor, you laugh at rat bites, but in
other cases this is more problematic. It leads to damage inflation at the
disadvantage of newcomers.

Furthermore, I did not want for the lower tier of the bestiary to become
irrelevant once the player gets some equipment. I don't have enough ressources
to "waste" mobs.

With damage cancellation, small spiders and little wasps can still deal just 1
point of damage, they can still be beaten by new players with just a rock, and
players with more stuff still have to watch out for them.

+CLAN+

Clans introduce mild competition among players, the subject of this
competition being +anchorstones and indirectly, locations.
A clan member can only use +anchorstones and +beacons placed by a player of
the same clan.
I chose the man/woman criteria to create two clans because it doesn't require
additional information storage (it is computed from the name like the players'
"skin") and is easy to check for players.
Players therefore cannot choose their clan, unless they create a new
character. They can also play both clans with different characters, which
should lead them to different places thanks to the different teleportation
networks.
A social/psy experiment showed that group preferences can appear even if how
the groups were made is arbitrary, and even if belonging to a group doesn't give
any significant advantage. They also persist when groups are merged.
Therefore despite the rigidity and the simplicity of our "clans", I expect it
to create interesting dynamics.

+CLOTH+

Cloth are relatively expensive, as gathering the material to make strings is
either slow or difficult (cotton farming or spider drops).
They have two unique features: vivid colors found nowhere else in the game (for
a full block), and the ability to make +slabs of cloth.
Their main function is to attract +NPCs.

+COAL+

Coal has three purposes:
- an explosive
- an ingredient to make diamonds
- a fuel
Coal can be obtained by mining, but also by burning wood. In the later case,
it is not worth it, by the numbers, to first burn wood to get coal and then use
coal as fuel.
A coal block has a burning time equivalent to 10 coal lumps, not 9.

The coal ore has a rare chance to drop a diamond instead of coal.
It can catch fire (most like as a result of the "light" +focus) and explode.
The intent of this feature is to help with mining, although it also introduces
some dangers to for the miner (e.g. if they set on fire cobwebs and don't see
there's coal there).

+CRAFTING+ (table)

I never played Minecraft (or its +MT clone), so I only discovered that feature
when someone made a crafting table mod.

However, before that I've always found that being able to craft anything on
the spot was a little bit too easy, and for what it's worth, a bit not +believable.
Still, players can carry a crafting table (and a furnace) with them. However,
it takes one slot in their inventory, which is not extendable (except for
those magic black chests, which are quite expensive).  So this feature
encourages players to build outposts where they can craft safely.

The crafting table had to come from loot crates in order to solve the
chicken-and-egg problem of "you need a crafting table to craft a crafting
table", which comes from the fact that I didn't want MC's 2x2 crafting grid.
But then, the crafting table had to be a common drop from loot crates ; also,
even if not common, players would eventually get more than they need. In order
to solve that issue, I made the crafting table a recipe component for useful
things, like chests and stores (makes sense), furnaces and trap/doors. The
latter ones are a bit far-fetched (although the furnace is somewhat like a
crafting device).

It often takes multiple steps to craft something in MF, sometimes maybe one
could say that it is a lot of clicks for relatively simple things. Two reasons
for that:
- it feels like you are actually crafting.
- some blocks are upgradable, eg from simple trapdoor to steel trapdoor.
  Everything has a cost in +MF, so letting players "recycle" their blocks
  helps with progression.


+DIAMOND+

Diamonds are extremely rare: there's a 1/100 chance to get one when digging
coal. A more reliable way to get diamonds is to craft them.
There's no diamond tools. The main use of diamonds is teleportation.

+DISCONNECT+

A player that gets accidently disconnected could be in serious trouble when
they reconnect. If they were levitating at high altitude (mostly advanced
players), performing a controlled fall (see +levitation) or riding a +whale,
upon reconnection they have no mana or the whale may have wandered off.
To prevent those accidental deaths, upon reconnection the first hit is always
cancelled, even if the player doesn't wear armor.
Obviously this could be abused, but I felt that the game cannot be both
unforgiving and unfair.

+DOOR+

Why no doors? Because they don't work well with our +protection system.
Visually they look like something that takes two blocks but it really is just
one block. And that leads to various issues even outside of our bizarre
protection scheme.

+DROP+

The main item dropped by mobs is +mese. The quantities are random, so they may
drop nothing at all, but on average they drop certain quantities.
Those quantities are set with respect mainly to how much HP they have. Bigger
mobs drop more, but they also drop proportionally more than smaller mobs.
This system intends to have player go after bigger mobs because they are more
profitable. For instance, using a mese wand (costs 1 mese crystal) to kill
small spiders yields about 3 mese crystals, while bigger spiders give 6 mese
crystals.
The difference is lesser if the mob also drops something else, like seeds,
honey or colored Mese.

+DUNGEON+

Dungeons have three purposes in MF:
- create a teleportation network thanks to dungeon beacons
- help with mining. Most dungeons have breakable walls, so they are like caves 
- provide unique building blocks, such as mossy cobble or brick

+ECONOMY+

I am no economist, I just have very basic notions of supply and demand,
sources and sinks, price and rarity.

I kept an eye on the economy in the game mainly to make trade interesting,
which in turn hopefully makes various +roles or specializations viable.
A natural currency in the game is +RP. Because it determines the ability to
play and extends it ( /recall command, +talents ).

Players should be encouraged to use mese as a currency, because fragments can
be assembled into crystals that can be grouped into blocks. The fact that Mese
can be "freely produced" by killing mobs is partly balanced by the fact that
it is needed in some crafts, traded with NPCs or used to teleport, so
inflation should be limited (besides, hunting mobs isn't actually free).

+ECOSYSTEM+

The fauna is mainly bugs. Partly because +Firefall had iconic spider-like
hostile mobs ("Arahnas"), partly because I didn't want players to kill
representations of actual animals (wolves,...) or humans/humanoids (we have
enough of that shit IRL, don't you think?).
Yet I feel a bit guilty of presenting +spiders and +wasps as "bad bugs".
However, players might have interest to leave them alone (because some of them
create saplings).
Fruits will regrow or not, randomly (as those fruits can be used to make a new
plant, chances are weighed so that a plant will produce enough fruits to make
at least a new plant).
Growth is generally slower that in MTG, partly because the duration of the day
is much longer, partly to make things a bit more +believable (no tree fully grows
in one day)

+FARLANDS+

Farlands is an MT game which is the second source of inspiration after
+Firefall, and also the source of many assets.
The great idea of having players build things to attract NPCs, and how to
implement it, comes directly from this game.
(note: there are some efforts to reboot Farlands - it was an abandonned game.
I refer here to the first version).


+FARMING+

Farming, just like in the real world, is the basis of the economy.
Although +MF doesn't introduce fancy crops beyond one the original farming mod
offers, it does make farmers busy by fully using saplings and fruits.

Food production is important because it is the only way for players to heal
themselves, and the natural sources of food (apple trees, blueberry bushes)
will eventually be depleted because they are not renewable without replanting.

Farming probably is the best activity for players who don't like to, or cannot
(because they play on mobile) fight mobs. As it involves some waiting for
things to grow, it also fits better the "socializer" +role. 

A problem with farming is that, the more you get the more you can get: for
instance if you grow mushrooms, the more you have the faster they multiply, and
then the more mushrooms you can grow.

So the quantities when farming tend to follow an exponential growth. I tried to
counteract it as much as possible. It starts with the default farming mod,
that I have hacked so that players will always get less seeds than what they
planted (approx. in a 1:2 ratio), so they will have to get seeds (mainly by
hunting down certain mobs, or by trading with other players)
Brown mushroom can grow into red mushrooms, turning the wood log they feed on
in the process. The light from the reds also prevents browns from spreading.
Players can choose to harvest often their "fields" (usually you grow shrooms
underground) in order to get more browns, or let them be to get more reds; reds
tend to appear when there's little room for them to spread.

Apple trees and blueberry bushes will randomly stop regrowing fruits, so
players will have to switch to renewable food sources (mushrooms, bread, fish,
honey).

Our farming mod is a simplified version of the one found in +MTG:
- one uses shovels to work the dirt, rather than a specific tool (hoe). This
  is because the shovel has few uses.
- light and water checks are done when working the dirt only. This means crops
  will grow in the night.
- Water (or ice) must be right next to the field. This is to avoid "magic"
  fields and create the need for irigation networks.
- crops grow in one step, after about one hour. The multistep scheme of the
  orginal mod is nice, but this is a severe penality for the players who will
  lose a lot of growth time if they go away.

All these processes are governed by randomness, so in some cases players will
get e.g. 0 apples from an apple tree sapling.
Ultimately, another predator are the players themselves, because it would be
too expensive, if possible at all, to place +protections on all these assets.


+FIREFALL+

Minefall is inspired from the defunct game "Firefall", which was something like
"an open world MMO FPS RPG with Jetpacks". A weird combo that made it perhaps a
bit niche. But it was a fun cooperative looting game. Some say it failed because
the project was poorly managed.

+FOCUS+

The "focus" chosen by players decides what their focus wand does. Choosing a focus
is the way to level up to +regular player.

The light focus is most interesting to miners, as it provides light and the fire
than can make +coal explode.
The air focus is interesting for explorers, as it makes whales available nearly everywhere.
The shadow focus is the one players who want to specialize in hunting.

+FURNITURE+

Furniture are blocks near which +traders will spawn. This category includes shops,
cabinets and shelves. The crafting guide mentions the property in the tooltips of
recipes.

+GAME+

What is a game? People more clever than I provided definitions, but to me games
are about choices. Players make choices in order to achieve a goal, which can be
either set by the rules of the game or set by the players themselves.
When you select your sword rather than your wand to fight a mob, you make a
choice. When you spend some bronze on protections rather than making tools, you
make a choice. Even when the outcome of an action is determined by luck, you
take risks and expect rewards, so you make a choice (by the way choices in the
presence of luck is called "game theory" in mathematics).

Furthermore, games are, I believe, deeply related to learning and training. When
you watch puppies or kittens play together, it is obvious that those plays are
softer versions of what happens when dogs or cats fight for territory. So are
human games. Even when you play chess, you are training your tactics (Chess,
with its pieces that have different abilities, do mimick battles). From
cops-and-thieves to Go to video games, the relationship between the game world
and the real world has become generally thiner and thiner; some video games
do learn you things about the real world, even if it is a much simplified
version like in Sim City for instance. Sometimes the learning happens not inside
the game itself, but around it in chats and forums, where people discuss and try
to make points. It's not uncommon to see reasoning and arithmetic being used there
to backup claims. 


In particular, as Minefall is an open world game with no set goal (although
the genre strongly favors "building stuff" as the main goal), it "teaches"
player how to set their own goals, which is an important skill IRL because the
real world is like that.

Those two aspects, choices and learning, influenced the designs of Minefall.

+GLASS+

The most common type of glass looks good but actually hinders the view. Clear
glass can be found in jungle ruins only, or is created by a lightning impact
on sand. There's also an aberrant tree with glass foliage. Obsidian glass can
be obtained by cooling lava. Aside from obsidian glass, players cannot make
glass.

+GOAL+

There is no particular goal in Minefall. However, a primary objective in
singleplayer mode is to build a farm; without it players cannot gain RP and
level up.

I believe that +MF puts enough roadblocks that players can have fun trying to
achieve they set for themselves: builders will find it difficult to gather
materials, fighters will have to fight mobs with varied characteristics,
explorers will have to travel a lot to find remarkable places and dungeons to
link them together, and socializers will have plenty of chances to interact
with other players.

I also think that each type of player get something valuable from what they
like to do, which makes all those of activities viable by the way of trade.

+GRIND+

"Grinding" or "farming" are sometimes terms used to designate the fact that
players perform the same action again and again in order to gain something.
This is generally seen as a bad thing. To me it is a "necessary evil" in an open
world game. If the best items in the game are made with diamonds and if all you
have to do is mine a full stack of them, then the game is over as soon as you
gain access to a diamond mine.
What I have tried to do is make "grinding" fun. I think players have some
prefered activity (like killing monsters) that they don't mind to do all day. If
this activity is rewarding them with something, they can trade it and achieve
their actual goal. Perhaps it is not the most efficient way to do it, but they
have fun doing it.

+GUEST+

A guest is a newcomer who has not been granted the "interact" privilege by
another player via the +RP system.
The game sometimes employs the term "guest mode" which is a bit different,
because players can lose the "interact" privilege without losing their
+regular or +advanced level.
Players without "interact", in addition to being unable to interact with
anything (note that this includes the crafting guides, unfortunately), are
ignored by mobs and cannot cause thunderstrikes. It prevents most indirect
griefing/trolling, but can also be used to tour safely the game before
actually playing it.

Clearly, neither this system nor +MF is designed to be played by a
large number of random players, but rather a small number of selected
players - the power to select players being mostly in the hands of active
players thanks to the +RP system.

+HAMMER+

The hammer doubles as a weapon in order to give a wider range of options for
fights. More specifically, it has greater range and a longer stun.

+HIVE+

Yes, this is a "butterfly hive". I didn't like the bees of the original mod,
and it gives another function to +butterflies. The hive has to have a bunch of
flowers next to it to "operate".
The conversion of the egg into honey is done randomly on a rather long timer,
so "when" it happens is unpredictable.  Players will probably want to use
multiple hives to get a reliable supply of +honey.

+HONEY+

To be honnest, I had trouble with honey and changed its effect a couple of
times.
I wanted something more to do for farmers; the +hives can only produce a
type of food, but we already have various foods.
That said, the more interesting use of foods that restore more than 1 HP at a
time is for trading with NPCs, which implicitely make those ingredients a bit
expensive.
The current definition of honey is under this "trading presure", so it is
unlikely to be used "on the field".
It is slow but easy to produce. It can be mass produced if a player invests
massively in this activity.
 
+HOTBAR+

The hotbar/selection bar was kept at 8 slots for two reasons:
- It fits the shape of the inventory panel (8x4). Even if you extend it to
  16 elements (non multiples of 8 are a no-go for usability), it still feels
  weird to use.
- I wanted to have the players think about their "loadout", that is what
  should be accessible rapidly. A miner will probably want to switch quickly
  between lamps, the compass, the pick and the sword. A hunter will probably
  fill their hotbar with wands, swords and food.

+HUNGER+

There is no hunger in +MF. It is easy to understand why, when one thinks about
the problems "hunger" is solving.

One problem is that often, in other games, it is easy to avoid getting hit and
losing HP (+armor makes it even worse). This is quite the opposite in MF. One
could say that the only way to not lose HP in MF it to do nothing.

The second problem is that in other games, it is easy to over-produce food,
so you have to "force" the players to eat so that farming can be a thing. MF
solves this problem using various mitigations regarding food production, and
by giving food another useful purpose (see +mana).

+INN+

An inn is a building built specifically to attract +traders. They must feature
+furniture, good lighting and a roof. Walls and protections are adviced but
not mandatory.


+K+

+LEVEL+

There are three-and-half player levels:
- +guest : you cannot really play, that's the "half" part.
- +beginner
- +regular
- +veteran (or +advanced)
Each level unlock some new possibilities which make the game a bit easier, but
also increase the risk of losing stuff. So roughly speaking, this is the
classic risk/reward formula where both the risks and rewards are increased for
each level.
 
+LEVITATION+

The ability to "fly" for a short while was a signature feature of +Firefall.
It is a cornerstone on which is built Minefall.
Before Minetest introduced the "auto-jump" feature, it was also a huge
improvement for mobility and exploration. 
As a prior flight simulation fan, I like how it requires some skill to use it to
its fullest, like fighting a +wasp in mid-air.
Levitation is implemented by making gravity slightly negative. It is the
jump impulse that makes players move up, mainly.
A side effect of this implementation is that players can also slowdown their
fall, and even, with a good mana pool and mana regen, go up a little after a
short fall.

+LICENSE+

Minefall is under AGPLv3 license, in order to be compatible with the licensing
terms of some its components.

While I tried my best to respect the licensing terms of the mods I have used
to make Minefall, there are many of them and I tried a lot more during the
couple of years I have spent on it. A mistake is likely (like a texture imported
 from another mod, or a violation of the terms of a license).
If you spot such a mistake, please let me know.
When there's no README with license statements, please take a look at the top
of the init.lua file of the mod.

As far as I am concerned, for the bits I wrote, my general policy is to
license it the same as the original mod (because often licenses require it).
Otherwise, my works are by default under "same license as Minetest", that is CC
BY-SA 3.0. If a license name for a piece I am the author of is ambiguous or
mispelled, please assume this license. In any case, I am unlikely to sue you
for the illegitimate reuse of my humble work, unless it is used to harm
kitties.
Finally, I would like to thank again the many mod makers of the MT community
who not only have made their hard work available for free, but also often
support their users for free.

+LIGHT+

MT is severely limited with regard to light and light effects. Limitations are
stimulating. The first tweak I introduced when I started this game was to make
those "useless" red mushrooms glow. Now they are the "sine qua non" component
of lamps. Glowing waters and glowing frozen grass add a touch of magic to
Minefall nights.
A general "lore" theme is that mese glows. Red mushroom glow because they
absorbed and accumulate mese from the ground (this inspired from some
real-life mushrooms that accumulate metals), water glows because of dissolved Mese.

+LOOT+

For mobs' "loot", see +drops.
Loot crates are found in ruins and dungeons. Their primary purpose is to
provide non-craftable items like crafting tables or compass.
There is a rare chance that they drop a special pieces of armor or a +cat.

+LORE+

The suggested lore is as follows:
Players come from a medieval world that is ruled by a tyrant. This home world
is similar to this world except for Mese, which is much more rare. Magic and
mana are state secrets.
It is rummored that people, be they criminals, rebels or wrongly accused
innocents, are thrown into a "hell gate", either as a death sentence or for
experimental purposes.  This "gate" is probably a beacon like one can find in
dungeons, that leads to this world.
People forced through this gate experience temporary or permanent amnesia (how
convenient... :-).
Minefall's world obviously seems to have been ravaged by some sort of
cataclysm in the past, that wiped out an entire civilization. Interestingly,
legends of the home world suggest that people escaped a world on the verge of
destruction thanks to a divine intervention.
Everything strange or unnatural in the current world is supposedly caused by
+Mese, including +levitation and the ability to communicate over long
distances (i.e. the in-game chat feature, which is a form of telepathy).
+Traders are mysterious people from another world. They refuse to talk about
who they are or where they come from. You cannot really kill them, like players
they are "recalled" when critically injured.

+MANA+

Mana is used for +levitation, by +wands, and by the hammer with the +anvil.
When eating at full health, the mana pool is refilled for the equivalent HP
value of the food item (+overeat). This feature extends the capabilities of
the player at the cost of food.

+MAPGEN+

Minefall is compatible with "mgv7" only. By default, upon the creation of a
new world, the game will use a random seed. It can be challenging as often
you'll spawn in hot or cold deserts.

The seed 12341234 is a good one for an easier start.

+MESE+

From a "lore" perspective, Mese is associated with magic. By
extension, it can also be associated with technology ("Any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C. Clarke). For
instance one needs Mese to make paper from logs; it is sort of a "metaphore"
of the industrial process that is applied IRL.
Mese is thought to be the cause of all the strange things in the world:
+levitation, giant bugs, rocks hanging in the sky...
Mese is also intended to be used as a currency for players.

+METAL+

Metal blocks provide +protection.

Tin is a relatively high-demand metal because it is used to make lamps.

Steel has 5 times the durability of bronze for tools, while being 4 times more
rare. For armor, the stat buffs make a difference by themselves, and it is
worth repairing (except boots perhaps).

Gold is the rarest but also not used for consumable items except the hammer,
which is best used to repair gold armor. The extra goes to protections.

Once players have equipped themselves with gold armor parts and made the
locked chests and stores they need, they don't need gold that much anymore
(because gold armor can be repaired too). This is why keys are made from gold,
not steel.

+MF+

Short for +Minefall

+MINEFALL+

The name comes from the game it is inspired from, +Firefall. Nothing to do with
the MC mod or anything else. I was naively thinking it was an original name, so
I didn't do any Internet search...
Amusingly +Firefall, from which half of the name comes from, also clashes with
the name of a band.


+MOBS+

Due to how the engine works, it becomes quickly obvious that nothing happens
where there's no players. The +lore can simply acknowledge that indeed the
presence of players sort of brings the world back to life... For some magic
reason.

Nearly all mobs are hostile in +MF. They are used to protect resources, that
is to put something between the players and what they strive for.
Most spiders and wasps, the two big families of mobs, spawn near ores if not
on top of it. If they don't (like the Ice spider or the giant beetle), they
protect a biome as a whole, in particular the +ruins.

They can be a resource themselves. All drop mese, some drop seeds, etc.
So players who just like fighting stuff can make a living from their favorite
activity.

+MOON+

The moon in +MF is 4 times bigger than the sun. One may assume that it is actually a planet and this world is actually a moon (nevermind the astrophysical objections).
Two reasons:
- I wanted less dark nights, and the bigger moon provides an explaination
- increase the fantasy world feel.

+MTG+

Short for "MineTest Game", the default game that is (was?) shipped with
Minetest, on which +MF is based.
MF is not a strict superset of MTG: some mods were added, others removed (e.g.
beds, vessels, buckets, minekart,...), others edited.
The non-obvious differences are listed in the Help tab.

+MULTIBOXING+

"Multiboxing" is the fact that players use multiple characters.
Sometimes games disallow it, but IMO there's no point in making rules one
cannot enforce.
If you cannot prevent it, then embrace it. The fact that characters can have
only one +focus and one +talent partly comes from that idea - it is more
effective to level up multiple characters and specialize each in certain
tasks.

The +clan system also could result in players having multiple character.

This however limits what the game can do; for instance it cannot give RP to
new players because players would create characters just to harvest RPs for
their main character; there cannot be direct competition between clans because
players could use puppet characters to spy on and/or sabotage the other clan.

+N+

+OBSIDIAN+

The obsidian shard has the unique ability to allow picking nodes as-is,
something called "silk touch" elsewhere. It drops from obsidian glass, which
can be obtained by cooling lava.
Some nodes won't allow this for obvious reason: dungeon beacons, containers,
loot crates.

+ORE+

Metal ores can be found at all altitudes with the same density. Moreover, a
stone containing ore can drop any metal lump, despite of the color shown. The
only variation is that some "colors" are more likely to drop a metal lump
corresponding to what the color suggests.

I made it that way so that the whole world, both underground and mountains, is
worth exploring. Explorers will probably have a field day collecting "easy"
ores near the entrance of caves and on cliffs, although as more and more
people explore and pick easy ores, they'll have to go further and further
away. Caves are still interesting for miners because one needs specific
equipment to mine (lamps, compass and some weapons because of spiders). It is
less easy, but it should give more guarantees to find something. This is even
more true for underwater caves (that's the main interest of the +diver talent).

Smelting ores into ingots takes a lot of time. Partly to make it more
+believable, but also to increase the value of wood and the importance of
farming - tree growing being one possible aspects of it. It also increase
the value of +coal.
Another side effect is that having more than one furnace is not too fancy.
Actually two is almost a minimum (one for smelting, one for other tasks like
bakind bread). With two or three, players can divide the time it takes to
smelt a stack of ore.

+OVEREAT+

"Overeat" happens when players eat at full health, or eat something with a HP
value greater than needed to fill their HP bar (for instance when eating an
apple at 19HP).
+MTG does nothing to prevent this. +MF fills the mana bar instead. This can be
used to "reload" faster during combat, or to prevent a deadly fall sometimes.
Players with the 'flyer' +talent can also use it to make longer flights.

+PAPER+
Paper in +MF is used for two valuable things: basic lamps and books. The main
use of books are +bookshelves, a type of +furniture.
The recipe mimics the Soda process, which is one of the first industrial paper
making process.

+PAPYRUS+

Papyrus could be grown and duplicated easily. Whatever resource it would give,
this resource would instantly become worthless.
In +MTG it is used to make paper, so paper is worthless and indeed, you don't do
much with paper. in +MF, +paper is technically cheap but quite long to obtain
in a sustainable way.


+PROGRESSION+

One thing I absolutely wanted to avoid with progression is to make the game
easier as players level up, because it also means that the game is more
difficult for newcomers, which is definitely a silly design.
Other games, in particular (MMO)RPGs, have zones associated with the various
levels of progression, where mobs become "beefier" and hit harder to
compensate the increasing power of the players.

The general idea of the design I came up with is simply to increase the
rewards and the risks together as the player levels up: leveling up unlocks
desirable +focus and +talents, but also increases the risk of losing your inventory
if you make a mistake and die because of it. This opens the possibility of
regression for players, which can be frustrating. But IMO the risk is also
more thrilling.

A second idea is that the rythme of progression should not be determined by XP
farming, but rather influenced by how good the players are at using their
resources. Leveling up or not is the players', not the game's decision, and
this decision is not a no-brainer.

+PROTECTION+

The "peri" mod is basically a stripped-down version of "Protector_redo" with a
radius of one.

The scheme simplifies and (hopefully) fastens protection checks.
I did not go for whole-area protections, because those areas become "blocked"
if the player becomes inactive.  Protection is therefore more "progressive"
and is linked to the wealth of the players. It's also, I think, relatively
simple to use. The grey Mese shard can be used by players in order to check
their protections (but not others' - it would make it easy to find a "hole").
A side effect of this scheme, I found out, is that it also introduce
architectural constrains: how to use as few as possible protective blocks, and
how to hide them or integrate them in the decoration of the building.

An important effect of protection is to nullify missiles.  mainly in order to
protects against mobs' missiles, in particular those with area effects such as
the green wasp's smog. This is particularly useful when a player builds
something near a dangerous area where "shooter" mobs spawn often. 

Another effect is to prevent "monster" mobs from spawning, and to
hurt them (1 hp/s). So even in soloplay, protections are useful.

+PVP+

The game allows PvP, but the game is also hard enough that players would
rather cooperate until they can afford jousts. The game is invite-only so
it is expected players won't "PK" without some sort of agreement.
It can cause "friendly fire" in particular with wands. That's deliberate.

+Q+

+RANDOM+

Minetest features procedural generation using "perlin noise", a form a
randomness that's suitable to make landscapes.  Minefall uses "luck",
"randomness" a lot.
One reason is to make the game more interesting. When all is well something bad
can happen. When you're in the mud something good can happen and improve your
situation. Of course the reverse can happen (eg be wealthy and win the lotery).
The second reason is that it is a cheap way to simulate complicated things.
Like +weather for instance.
The third, even less glorious reasons, is that random rewards is something that
naturally keeps players playing. this is well-known and sometimes abused in
particular in free-to-play games. I have no interest in making our players
"addicted", but if the cause of the addiction is a form of pleasure, a little
bit shouldn't hurt (that said it can be frustrating at times; like when you
get 10 crafting tables in a row from loot crates in the early game).

+REGULAR+ (player)

The "Regular player" level is an intermediate level. It unlocks enough
features while providing a good level of safety (bones), that some players
might choose to stay at this level rather than going +veteran.

+REPUTATION+

See +RP

+REWARD+

Drops and other rewards in +MF follows two principles: random and not too big.
Both try to workaround the fact that mobs can get stuck and be easy to kill.
What's more, players can modify the environment to have it happen or build
traps.
That's why there's no big boss that drops big rewards. The drops are generally
proportionate to how difficult it is to kill a mob, but even the red wasp, which
is the "boss" of the game, has no guarantee to drop red mese.
The randomness is there just to add some variety. It seems to me that not
being sure to get item X when you kill mob Y makes the decision to fight it or
avoid it more interesting. See also +random


+ROLE+

The game is loosily based on the old Bartley classification of players:
- the socializers, who like to talk and share ;
- the achievers, who like to "max out" as much things as they can ;
- the explorers, who like to explore and discover stuff ;
- the killers, who like to kill stuff, including other players.

The way I see it, "socializers" would be farmers, as waiting for things to grow
can give a lot of free time (unless they intend to get rich, but that's more
an "achiever" thing). "killers" would be players who like to fight monsters,
or do "PvP" fights. "Explorers" are easy to figure out. "Achievers" would be builders.

+RP+

RP means "Reputation point(s)". The idea is to reward active players, and also
let players moderate each others a bit.
A player who lose all their RP lose automatically the "interact" privilege
(except admins), in other words they revert to simple guests (except they do
keep their level).
If a player dies, they lose 10 RP. It prevents suicidal behaviors, which could
be used in order to get resources without risk (e.g. could create an alt,
invite it into the game with their main, and do the dirty/risky stuff with
this alt).

Digging/placing a crate costs/awards 1 RP. The cost is there to prevent
players from ransacking mindlessly ruins and dungeons.

The main source of RP is farming. It is a relatively elaborate process in
which players must acquire and manage various things to get loot crates
from +NPCs.

Note: when a player has the "give" privilege on, the /rep command won't affect
their own RPs.
 
+SHADOW+

Mob:
The Shadow is an allied mob that can be summoned with the Ghost +wand. It has
a negative regen, so it loses about 1 HP per second except in +smog.
It can be used as a DPS support or just to distract hostile mobs, and perhaps as
an element of surprise, meatshield or blocker in PvP.
Feature:
Certainly a welcome addition; it brings more life to the game. Their intensity vary
depending on the cloud density, just like general lighting. When under heavy clouds,
they almost disappear.

+SHOP+

The shop mod used here is a bit inconvenient because the seller has to have
the item they want to buy.

Shops can be used as letterboxes or donation boxes (ask for a thing, give
nothing in return).

Shops are a protected +furniture. Their storage capacity is larger than other
containers, so they are still somewhat interesting in singleplayer.

+SHOVEL+

The shovel doubles as a hoe (right-click a *dirt* node with it) because it is
a rarely used tool.
Better metal for the shovel translates to very little digging speed
improvment. In my experience, a shovel that digs too fast can be detrimental,
as you might dig nodes you don't want to. Instead, they are more durable.
This is more or less also the case for the other tools.

+SMOKE+

Smoke appears near flames and furnaces. Usually right on top unless
something is blocking. It normally moves up. It does not pass through doors,
trapdoors, or other "walk through" nodes.
Smoke can become +smog if it has nowhere to go.
Smoke is implemented as air-like nodes and moved by timers. As a result, Smoke
will remain if all players live the area, so it can be visible from
afar and not "alive". That's a drawback of the implementation choices, but it
lets us have entire forests on fire with acceptable performance impact.

+SMOG+

Smog is a denser form of smoke, which causes 1 damage per second. Smog won't
go up or down unless it has nowhere else to go.
It appears near lava or "thanks" to certain mobs. Trapped +smoke also turns
into smog.

+SPIDER+

The orange spider spawns on top of all metal ore. It places cobwebs, and shoot
at the players a missile that can turn into a smaller spider or a cobweb when
it hits a node.

The ice spider spawns on snow. It is a fast shooter.

The lava spider spawns in lava sources. It starts fires and may explode on
death. It takes damage from water.

The small orange spider spawns from cobwebs and loot crates.

The small water spider spawns in water near ore or coal or loot crates (flooded
dungeons). It has a very good health generation in water.

+STAIR+

The "stair" of the stairs-and-slabs mod has been reduced to a single "bar". This
shape is more versatile.
The slabs were removed because their lighting is buggy if you try to make them
block light (not really a solvable problem unless the engine spends a lot of
resources to get it right). An exception is cloth, because it is acceptable
for them to let some light thru.
Stairs are not directly craftable. They drop when players dig a cobble-type or
wood-type block. This is to avoid the cluttering of the crafting book with
their recipes.

+STARTING+

The suggested path for player is described in the HELP tab of the inventory.

For starting a new world with the goal of opening a server, I suggest to start
playing it offline in order to get familiar with the area.

Play until you can set singleplayer's new home, which will be the default
spawning point for all new players. Then switch to your online avatar.
Temporarily grant yourself all privs in order to give yourself some RPs and
maybe remove all trace of singleplayer (protections - you can remove and place
back the beacon, it won't affect the spawning position itself).

+STONE+

Stones when dug drop nothing, this is to make ruins more valuable.

+SWAMP+

The swamps biome is inspired from +Farlands. They feature giant grass that
beetles can turn into aspen saplings, and small water springs that permit in-land
farming.
The drawback is the poor visibility and the slowing giant grass that make it
easy for giant beetles to ambush players. 
It is also a wet climate biome where rain and thunderstorms happen often.

+TALENT+

At +regular level, players can use the /talent command to activate a talent
and level up to +veteran player.


The "flyer" talent is a good first choice as it is useful all the time. It is
also the only talent that benefit from equipment (mana regen/pool).

The "diver" option is a solution to make use of oceans. On the paper, compared
to other options, this talent seems less attractive, but ocean floors and caves are
a source of easy ores and coal, as the underwater world is far less crowded than
the land both with regard to players and mobs. Also, it gives access to
flooded dungeons and their beacons.

The "traveler" talent is most interesting for traders/farmer, as it allow them
to move more almost freely between their various locations and refill their shops.
 
Players can change their talent anytime for the same cost. This provides
another incentive for offline players to produce RPs. Online players might
prefer to level up multiple characters, one for each talent they are interested
in.

+TEAM+

Playing in groups or teams make things a lot easier, so I did very little to
help teamplay. The only two exceptions are chat channels and the /wp command.

+TELEPORTATION+

Teleportation can happen in three ways:
- short range teleportation with the teleportation wand
- long range controlled teleportation with beacons
- the /recall command.

The /recall command costs 10 RP, so it is most likely used as a last resort.

+THUNDERSTORM+

Thunderstorms happen when the weather is very bad. Thunderstrikes generally
have negative consequences for the players: a hit on leaves spawns the large
grey +spider, a hit on anything flammable will start a fire, a hit on seawater
has a small chance to create a new block of seawater (which will most often
result in a permanent rise of the sea level), a hit on stone will create an
explosion, a hit on the ground has a chance to create an aberrant tree.

The aberrant tree event can be a good thing for players, depending on the type
of tree it creates.

+TIN+

Tin has few uses in our low-tech world.

The default +MTG has been changed from 1/8 to 1/3 tin/copper ratio to make
bronze. The real-world ratio is around 1/10, so MTG is actually right on this,
but increasing it 1/4 is an acceptable approximation. It also helps a bit in
the early game because beginners can make their first 4 bronze ingots faster.

Another artificial use is in the recipe of metal signs (although tin has been
used to make decorative objects IRL - there used to be "whitesmiths").

Tin also enters in the making of lamps, with the idea that it is used as a
reflector; tin was used to make mirrors.

Eventually, it can be used as +protection.

+TIPS+

The /tips command gives useful tips, but does not give the most useful ones,
which can look like "exploits", but are legit in my book:

- one can teleport mobs to make it easier to fight them, for instance between
  walls or trees. One can even prepare the place with protections for extra
  damage or even risk-free slow kill.
- obsidian  shards lets one create "mob farms" e.g. by placing ore stone in
  favorable environments.
- there must be two non-walkable nodes above a spawning node for mobs to spawn.
  So one can place sand on top of ore stones or loot crates for peace of mind.

+TODO+

- check if channels prevent from seeing general chat.
- use the mob's texture for "blood"/death particle?
- use collision hints for mobs (jumping)
- use collision hints for missiles? (requires physical)

+TRADER+

From the +lore's perspective, traders are coming from another world.

From the gameplay perspective, traders create an incentive to build more and
bigger. Trading makes farming and building a more viable activity, if not
vital for the community: without farmers, gaining RP or obtaining certain
uncraftable items is a lot more difficult. 

Traders spawn on top of cloth blocks, exclusively near +furniture and
in places neither directly exposed to the sun nor too dark.
Cloth slabs and stairs have respectively 1/2 and 1/4 the chance to spawn
traders, compared to full blocks (this is fair wrt to the cost).

+TRAVELER+

One of the +talents, but I might have used this word as a synonym for +trader
(actually, traveler players are likely to specialize in trading).

+TREE+

There are a lot of mods aimed at preventing the "trunkless trees syndrome"
caused by players that randomly cut bits of trees and then walk away. I made
yet another tree protection mod (YATPM) that prevents them from chopping a
tree node if there's a tree node above it. Thanks to +levitation, players can
jump on top of a tree to cut it down.

This prevention is not flawless by any means, but at least it sends a signal
to the players: we don't like it, don't do that.

In addition, cutting down a whole tree will make the leaves decay, which
is a significative amount of extra fuel that is welcome, given
that smelting metal lumps requires more fuel than in most other games.
As the main source of fuel (players will likely keep native +coal for other
purposes), trees play a significant role in +MF, and tree growing is likely to
be part of the farming activity.

A side effect of YATM is that houses made of tree logs benefit from a minor
protection: other players cannot dig a random part of the wall as they could
with most other material (e.g. cobble stone); astute players will probably
figure out that they only need to protect the top of the walls (this is
usually where the roof starts...). That said, fire could be an issue
(protection prevents fire from destroying protected nodes, but won't prevent
the fire from spreading).

Another peculiarity in +MF with regard to trees is the leaves: they are not solid
(walkable), and the texture layout is different from +MTG.
Leaves are not walkable for several reasons. First, it avoids having mobs
on trees. Second, mobs generally have some difficulty to move in a world made of
cubes. Pass-through leaves clear their paths. Third, levitation would make it
too easy to "walk over" the mobs that typically spawn on the ground.

The leaves use the fire texture's layout in order to obstruct the view
when the player is in a tree, and also in order to make the world a little bit
less cubic and introduce some variety; this layout dynamically changes
according to what's around the leave node. The same trick is used for cobweb
and works pretty well. For leaves, results are sometimes good sometimes less
good, but considering the other points, I decided to keep it that way.

All leaves also have the move_resistance attribute, for realism. If they can
save players by breaking a fall, they also nearly nullify +levitation, which
can turn them into deadly traps.

The small pine tree present in MTG was removed because it had a three
leaves node top, which forces a leaf decay radius of 3 when 2 would be enough
if not for this. But having different trees with same trunk/leave types and
different decay radius requirements lead to inconsistent foliage shapes after
leaf decay, and sometimes irritating leaves hanging in mid-air. That was my
conclusion after trying to solve this problem many times, to no avail.
Modifying the schematic of the offender was a work not worth it.

+U+

+VETERAN+

"Veteran player" or "Advanced player" is the max level for a player.
It is obtained when a +regular player choses a +talent.

+WAND+

Wands are the tools that bring in the game some of the elements of +Firefall,
which had, like many MOBA/MMORPG games, player-selectable skills.
Except perhaps for the Mese wand that tries to bring some FPS feel. Of course,
MT is not an FPS engine, so we can't go too far there. Some mods provide
firearms, but I didn't want to give wrong expectations. Besides, firearms
don't really fit in our world.

Mese Wand
Mana cost(MC): 1 Damage(Da): 2HP Durability(Du): 512
Purpose (P): offensive Range (R): short
This is a purely offensive wand. Used perfectly (no miss, no escapes), it
will deal 1024 HP of damage, which is well worth its cost in terms of mese
even on mobs that don't drop much mese.

Ice Wand
MC: 1 Da: ? Du: 128 P: defensive/offensive R: short
The Ice wand does not directly deal damage, it traps mobs inside an ice cube.
Depending on the water damage stat of the mob, it may heal it or do
significant damage (4-8 HP). Players can easily trap 2 mobs in one cube.

Teleportation Wand
MC: 1 Da: 0 Du: 128 P: support R: long
This is a purely utility wand. It can be used to travel faster, or get out of
dire situations. It can also be used to reposition mobs in more favorable
places.

Focus Wand
MC: ? Da: ? Du: ? P: ? R: ?
The effect of the Focus wand depends on the "focus" the player has chosen. See in-game help.

+WASP+

When I started to make +MF it became quickly clear that it was difficult for
mobs to walk in a cube world. Especially if the mob is bigger than one of
those "cubes".
The way out was to allow them to +jump+ higher - sometimes laughably (but also
terrifyingly!) high, or to make them fly.
The red wasps are like mini-bosses in the game, as they are a bit
more difficult to fight than other mobs, and they drop valuable gred mese.

+WHALE+

Whales can be found not in water, but in the sky. I simply could not resist
this touch of fantasy. They spawn on top of snow blocks above altitude 75
(snowy mountains tops).
Players can therefore build "whaleports".
Players can ride whales. When doing so, they won't be attacked by mobs. The whale
itself has 999 HP, so it can survive lots of accidental hits.
Players can hit (without hurting it) the whale to set its heading to the
direction they are looking.
So they provide a rather slow but convenient transport.
See also +disconnect.

+WEATHER+

Weather depends on the biome. Biomes with more humidity are more cloudy and
rainy. There is also a yearly cycle of about 63 in-game days.
Moon (day) 0 in the game corresponds to spring, so you should notice an improvement of the weather in the first 15 days (summer).

In wet biomes during the rainy seasons it can happen that night seems to fall
in the middle of the day because of a +thunderstorm.

I removed the particle effects that mimic rain drops from the original mod
(Snowdrift) because it was unsatifying. I think it really have to be handled
by the engine itself to look good at an acceptable cost.
However, in very cold biomes (wherever there's snow), snowflakes fall instead.
I improved the sound handling significantly (distant rain and thunder sound when indoor).

+X+
+Y+
+Z+

