The "official" lore behind the automatic shooting is that your laser eye is malfunctioning and can't be turned off. ;-) I also toyed with the idea of adding "bad" targets you must aware so you have to be careful where you look.
Thanks for mentioning the hitbox problem, in my playtests it never felt that serious tho. But yeah, I wish Luanti would make it easier. I have added it to my TODO list to improve the hitbox when Luanti allows this. Or maybe there is a workaround?
Yes, the cubic rocket launchers are a jam compromise (but also, I'm not a skilled modeller *shrug*). I originally planned to make the rocket launchers with two parts: One base, and one moving part.
Yeah I didn’t want to write the behavior of the enemies into the help, you’re supposed to figure it out on your own (and you did).
I think the help has all the neccessary information to play.
The silly bouncing mechanic was by design, in my playtests I figured just walking around the levels made the game more boring and I just wanted to add another quirky mechanic on top of the "laser eye".
In version 1.1.0, I nerfed bouncing a bit so you at least no longer bounce when hitting the bottom of a node (like a tree) to stop infinite bounce loops.
You can either use minetest.<some_function_name> or core.<some_function_name>. But luanti.<some_function_name> is clearly wrong and was never officially supported (confirmed by wsor4035). In lua_api.md right at the top it also explains this.
core is preferred now, but minetest is also supported. It doesn’t really matter which you pick.
This mod, as of v1.0, fails immediately on starting it in Luanti 5.14.0 with the following error:
ModError: Failed to load and run script from ~/.minetest/mods/obelisk_analog/init.lua:
~/.minetest/mods/obelisk_analog/init.lua:1: attempt to index global 'luanti' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
~/.minetest/mods/obelisk_analog/init.lua:1: in main chunk
I think you need to replace the variable luanti with core throughout your code.
(Question: Was the luanti global ever supported in Luanti? It doesn’t seem so or did I miss something?)
This mod is super hacky and I don't recommend it. To create such a block, you must manually put a "top slab" node on top of a normal node and you can only get those special top nodes in Creative Mode.
The top slab nodes also "blocks" the node above them, because technically the top slab is occupying the node above the bottom slab node. This means you cannot place anything above a stacked slab.
Worse, this mod allows you to place the top slabs anywhere, not just above slabs. If you place a top slab on just any random node, it "sinks" inside that node, causing ugly z-fighting (a graphical glitch).
Finally, this mod is not generic at all, only a few select Minetest Game nodes are supported.
Fun fact: Retro Plus was actually inspired by this texture pack, but I was annoyed it felt so incomplete so I went ahead and added the "missing" textures. Thus, Retro Plus was born.
I have decided to switch from neutral to positive rating because the game has become much more stable after updates. I no longer experience the issues mentioned before so this game can be recommended with peace-of-mind to new Luanti players. I suspect some bugs were fixed in the game directly, but maybe some stability fixes also came after Luanti updates. I (re-)tried this game in Luanti 5.14.0.
While the game is not 100% bug-free, the worst bugs that ruin gameplay (like random dark spots in the world) are gone. Great!
(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version, written by a participant.)
This game (?) is basically a looking-at-numbers simulator, and super confusing. The game is meant to be educational and it does include an in-game help but how it relates to the game is unclear. I also have no idea how accurate any of the information presented to us is; the meaning of the icons is not explained. I suggest readers to be skeptical by default.
You as the player can only interact by producing stuff like adrenaline but what does it do? No idea. Also, that's the ONLY way for you do do something. The rest of the time you can only follow some numbers which I assume are some measurement values of the body.
And this is the whole "gameplay". SUPER confusing. The help is not really helpful; I don't really understand what is the point of clicking the buttons. The help only gives you vague relationships but the info seems incomplete. It seems a lot more is going on behind the scenes than is displayed which makes it harder to understand. I highly doubt this "simulation" is even close to medical reality.
The "blocky" body shown in the background means nothing. You might expect that it would show something interesting like bloodstreams or chemicals moving in the body or whatever, but no. Nothing happens there ever, it's just background decoration.
This game aims to be educational but I believe it failed even at that goal because it does not do a great job in visualizing or explaining things or how stuff interacts with each other.
This game is a direct sequel from Artifact from last year, and has the same feel. Sadly, it is MUCH shorter and not as vast.
I dislike the use of AI for a title image, especially in a game jam.
The first room was surprisingly difficult because it turned out to be a parcours puzzle, so it was irrelevant to the "Line of Sight" theme of this year's game jam.
while probably not strictly required, I figured the parcours section of the game were easier with the secret sprinting feature. The game never mentioned you're allowd to sprint. :-/
The second room was more interesting and introduced the first actual "line-of-sight" puzzles. But those puzzles were very basic, you just had to activate a few switches. The hardest part was finding the right spots to walk to and parcouring. Not really enough for a new game, even a short one. Even a short game should at least explore a little bit the unique mechanic it introduces. This game did not do that.
And the third room already ended the game. :-(
I really love the graphics and textures, it's very mysterious and dungeon-ish. The story is not really that interering and frankly forgettable, but maybe that's because the game is too short for the player to "connect" to any of the characters.
BUT! I do believe the Artifact series has potential to become something really great if more time is spent on it. There is something special about this dungeon atmosphere …
Sound design was only a few simple sounds but no music or ambience, although these dungeons really YEARN for some audible ambience.
The cut scenes have improved compared to last year's Artifact. The game uses a formspec trick to force the camera to be fully locked during cut scenes, so the glitchy camera twitching is gone. GENIUS!
Finally, this game is shizophrenic about its own name. Artifact, or Artifact One? Hmm …
(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
The plot and setting of this game is great, especially for a game jam. You have dropped into a hole, and must find out.
This is small and simple enough to write a little mini adventure game for and initially the game does deliver on that promise.
Unfortunately, this game is very incomplete, you only get to discover the early part of level design and can interact with a few things, but you can never escape The Gorge. Except you can, actually because you can break random blocks (like pipes) and just nerdpole out of the map. :D (this is probably a bug)
I like the mechanic where you can drag furniture to solve puzzles. Future adventure games can and should STEAL this idea. :D
The interpretation of the theme "Line of Sight" feels kinda forced here. The game justifies it with that you can "see" outside the gorge. Yeah …
For a post-jam version of the game I recommend to fix the obvious bugs (like all the breakable blocks) and the very least add a level exit door, (unless you actually plan to make the world more complex anyway). Even if the game ends up very short, having some closure will make it so much more satisfying.
(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version, written by a participant.)
The plot of this game caught me by surprise, but I like it. The narration makes the abtract world feel like it has purpose.
The mechanic this game introduces is interesting a great interpretation of the "Line of Sight" theme of the game jam. You can't walk/jump but have to click on attractors to be attracted, while avoiding laser fields. This has potential. "Line of Sight" can be taken literally because you can only click on attractors you can directly see. The controls are weird, having to click somewhere else to stop being attracted feels a bit hacky. I would maybe suggest to allow to press Sneak or Aux1.
There are not a lot of levels atm but the few levels that exist were fun. The end was unsatisfying; it came before the game really began.
The speech is generated with Text-to-speech LLMs (=AI). I would normally STRONGLY disapprove of. However, the theme of this game is the digital and the voice feels uncanny corporate. Which actually makes 100% sense here. IMO this use of AI was appropriate because it is actually using technology to fulfil an already well-defined and thought-out task, rather than to just bypass the creative process. I assume the AI was not used to write the actual texts, right?
I like the music. It's not a masterpiece, but it does its job well enough for this game to give a "digital" feel.
The graphics feel somewhat cheap. I know this game is probably meant to be abstract but something just feels … off. With the color scheme, the shapes, etc. That the "lasers" are a full blocks is very confusing to me. The player model is probably just a dummy.
The game contains cut scenes but moving the mouse causes annoying camera twitching. This is a Luanti limitation, but Artifact One found a clever workaround: opening an invisible non-closable formspec.
Overall, I don't think this game is "there yet". With more levels and especially polish it could be nice.
(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
I think I played this for about 30 minutes then became bored after I managed to craft the first "light towers". You are thrown in a dark random world full of dead trees and must progressively collect materials and craft buildings to proceed, most importantly the towers of light. You can gather stone, wood metal and most importantly lightshards.
Unfortunately, this game turns out to be too grindy: It seems the only way to get the important lightshards is by killing the bug creatures but you need to kill a LOT of them. It doesn't seem you can mine for lightshards. The fact this game also doesn't have an end or any sense of closure is unsatisfying. Sandbox games only make sense when you have a lot of things to do (like a large list of crafts). For smaller games like this one, adding some mission, goal or closure is key to success, I suppose.
More frustratingly, the bug creatures randomly destroy your structures, so say bye-bye to your furnace you have grinded 20 minutes to get. :-( I don't mind difficult games, but I mind games that are difficult by being annoying.
The bug creatures don't really behave well either: Their movement is not fluent at all.
Also, the game is lacking in atmosphere: No music, no sounds. And the landscape overall feels a bit too repetitive as well so it's unfortunately not immersive.
Conceptually, this could have become a nice game. The idea sounds very interesting on paper, but the excution is sadly not. If the grind was not so bad, it was more atmospheric and the core gameplay would be more focused towards an end.
(DISCLAIMER: This is a review for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
This game offers too little in gameplay.
You just walk on a path and come across various biomes (mostly forest) and occassionally meed 2D NPCs with some very basic throwaway dialogue. That's it. That's the whole game.
This game is basically a map generator with a few NPCs slapped on a path, there is not much real gameplay beyond that, sadly.
I wonder if the author just ran out of time for the game jam. I wonder what the author envisioned for the "full" game.
(DISCLAIMER: This is a review for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
This game makes no sense but I liked it. You are trapped in hyper-minimalist (but not ugly) rooms and must hit the target block with bow and arrows to proceed. The game progressively adds more puzzle elements like switches, arrow (symbols) that deflect the arrow (that you shoot), low gravity, etc.
This game reminded me a lot of the game Alter but it felt a little bit more polished.
It's a really basic puzzle game but the level design has a good progression. Finishing the game took me about 1 hour. I also like this game actually felt "complete" compared to other jam entries.
A few levels were slightly frustrating because they required too strong parcours skills, causing me to fall off over and over again, but the frustration was still in the acceptable range.
This is not the most polished game; there is no music and the sound effects are super basic. I also found the game to be rather buggy, many others have already mentioned the same bugs I also found in their reviews. I wish the bugs will get fixed later.
The first room is basically a classic parcours puzzle. The goal was to disable all 3 generators. You were supposed to jump on the bushes at the wall to eventually climb higher and higher. The final generator was on the balcony high up. Also, the game didn't tell you you can sprint with Aux1 (E key by default).
The line-of-sight mechanic was introduced in the next room, and after that the game already ends before the game has even begun. :-(
I got very excited when I saw this mod. Entities that recreate nodes? Awesome!
But sadly it is unusable in its current state because the API documentation is very insufficient. Only a few data formats are described but not the functions.
The code quality of this mod is terrible, the same code is literally repeated 14 times but with different colors instead of just doing a simple for-loop. What's worse, the texture names ignore ALL convention (no mod prefix used), thus polluting a lot of namespaces and creating a headache for texture pack creators and game devs.
Also, this mod registers the red bed again which doesn't make sense and just pollutes the item list. Disappointingly, you can't use dyes to re-color beds.
For no reason, this mod decided to also make beds bouncy, which is out-of-scope for a mod that claims to only offer new bed colors.
At least the bed textures themselves are good, but that's about it.
Suggestions:
Prefix all textures with colorful_beds_
Rewrite the code to register all beds in a single for-loop
Remove bouncy beds feature
Overwrite default red bed instead of registering a 2nd red bed (don't forget to add aliases after you removed the extra red beds)
So at least the lever thing is done since a while now (good suggestion) but I won’t do the rest. I think prison door and workbench are fine but even if not, I don't trust my graphics skill enough to change it myself so I rather not touch it (the textures were made by jp, after all). At least the bottom face of the workbench has been updated a while ago to match the sides but that’s probably not what you meant.
I am extremely careful with adding more content to this mod to keep it lightweight and not bloated.
I’ve just checked the game sources myself and the files in question no longer exist. I also skimmed the files and found no mention of -NC.
Maybe this -NC problem got silently fixed in the meantime? (I did not do a full check tho.)
EDIT: Oops, you're right. :-(
I just found the files myself now. mods/fishing/sounds/SoundLicense.txt contains evidence of the files being non-free. Yes, those two files should ideally be removed or replaced.
This mod looks like a very basic adaption for the game by basically just adding new nodes without really caring about the details of the game. It’s okayish, but I cannot really give it a thumbs up at this point. Depends on how high your standards are.
OK, if you build it correctly, it can look cool. But building the arches and doors is tricky and annoying. The texture rotates with the arch so if you rotate the arch in a particular way, the texture is all messed up. Why not used world-aligned textures? Also, the mod adds two door nodes for each side: Left and right. This is unneccessary, one node should have been sufficed. Other door mods including the game’s own only need one door node because they allow to flip it.
This mod adds wooden and metal doors. The wooden textures match the actual wood in this game, but the metal doors sadly have a color mismatch. For example, tin doors look different than tin blocks.
The in-game door names are bad. Why use the name "door3" in a player-facing text? Just say something like "Tall Door" or whatever instead of this technobabble.
The screwdriver is partially supported, but behaves differently and inconsistently compared to the game's default doors. Punch key rotates the door instead of flipping it. Place key does nothing instead of centering the door. (I understand that support for door centering would need a major rewrite, but still!)
Finally the mod breaks a few unwritten "rules" of the game:
The doors are allowed to overlap with other nodes at the top segment. I understand this is neccessary for the arches to work, yet this breaks a rule that Hades Revisited carefully follows for all other nodes including its own doors
It adds nodes for Stone Block and similar nodes. Those nodes are not meant to be crafted into new shapes; they are instead meant to be compressed versions of the original
The screenshots are incorrect as they show the nodes of the original mod for Minetest Game.
Please upload new screenshots that show this mod in Hades Revisited.
Thanks! Yes, I worked really hard to make version 2.0.0 a reality. :-)
I picked a font which supports a very large amount of characters, thus allowing plenty of translations. I personally think the font looks alright. I guess it’s a matter of taste. I also intentionally picked a serif font to add a bit of a "vintage" vibe to the game.
About the controls text: What screen resolution do you use?
Yeah, it would be best if a game provides this mod on its own, unless it already rolls out its own tooltip system for some reason.
But just dropping this mod into a random mod collection is not guaranteed to work because the other mods might not expect such changes. That’s just the nature of modding. I explicitly warned in the description this mod is best suited to be included into game by the way. So I think your complaint about compatibility is a bit unfair. This mod was never meant to be able to be dropped in everywhere. That was never the promise.
Version 1.1.0 provides a few new helper functions to hopefully ease some compatibility pains, but it still requires collaboration of other mods. Again, this is by design.
FYI: I just released version 2.0.0 which is a BIG update compared to 1.4.0 (I don't know which version you played).
The rotating hook now has an overlay and should be more intuitive. Arrows appear on blocks. There still isn't a real story, except now this is a deliberate design decision. Not every game needs a deep story. Let's just say this is "good enough" for me. The whole idea of "pirates + laser puzzles" is obviously very silly to begin with so if you try to take it TOO seriously, it quickly falls apart. :D I'm also afraid that by attempting to write a story, it might just feel too "forced" to the player which is why I ultimately decided against writing a story. OK, I lied: You're a pirate on the search for treasure. That's it. That's the official "story". :P
The extensive help book for the blocks has been moved to another place. I'm not sure if it was a good idea but I will see what other players have to say.
And there are just a ton more changes to the game.
The promo image is absolutely ridiculous. The lever, button and antenna on the block do not exist in the real mod. The remote control has "on" and "off" buttons, but also an "on/off" button (which also looks garbled). The "L" button makes no sense. The random up arrow in the background means nothing.
The UI is confusing. The two modes are called "lever" and "button" which is a bit strange. It is inconsistent in calling the channels either "Left/Right" or "Left Click/Right Click". The word "click" does not work anymore, because people can rebind those keys now
The actual node texture looks bad, it uses the same texture on all sides and also has an art style mismatch (not mesecons yellow, no 16×16 texture). And it also doesn't look like in the promo image, and looks identical in ON and OFF state
The chat command makes no sense and feels bloated
Still uses the name "Minetest" instead of "Luanti"
When you destroy an active receiver node, it is not removed from the receiver list, leading to garbage in the database. If an LVM destroys a receiver node, same problem
Code garbage:
The receiver ID is overly complex. It also needs to store data in a file, which is risky because that can lead to data inconsistencies. It would be much simpler to just use node positions to identify receivers instead
The receiver ID is broken by design. It just generates a random 4-digit number and when it collides, it tries again. This mod will freeze when there are 10000 receivers
Uses minetest.serialize to store positions instead of minetest.pos_to_string
Wrong use of translation placeholders: %s instead of @1, or outright string concatenation
There is code for sneak+rightclick with remote on a receiver, but it never runs
And I could just go on and on and on …
PLEASE just learn real progamming already. Vibe coding is a dead end.
Yeah, I kinda agree, it has become somewhat dated due to the variety of games available now, games that break with many expectations (even the controls). At least the tutorial is not wrong or broken, so I keep it public for now. For MTG and MTG-like games, I think it is still relevant. But yeah, I don’t think this will be my main focus of maintenance. I guess I keep basic life support (=no crashes), but that’s probably it.
I’ve toyed with the thought of maybe making a reboot of this called “Luanti Academy” which acts less of a tutorial and more as a showcase both for players and devs alike. Would be more open about the things it shows, and exposing some of the more obscure things. Some kind of interactive experience. Not sure how it would work in practice.
Useful tool if you need a quick visualization of 2D noise, I think I'll keep it.
Although I believe it could use a few more convenience features, to make it more useful to actually use the noise parameters in stuff like mapgens, or decorations. For 2D noises in mapgens, we frequently check if the noise value is within a particular min/max bounds, so customizing the min/max bounds of the rendered pixel color would be very useful.
The information could use some work as well. To make it more "scientific", it should have a gradient showing the meaning of the pixel values, as well as the axis directions (X, Z). Tooltips would also go a long way.
Very strange this is a game and not a mod. I would like it more as a mod. Anyway, this is an overall thumbs up from me.
Btw, have you heard of Perlin Explorer? It's the same, but in 3D.
In this game, your task is to fly over the world of lakes, grasslands, deserts and mountains to extract resources by placing buildings like collectors (to collect ore and more), power plants (to make your buildings work), towns and markets (to earn $$$) and connect them with rails. You can start anywhere you like on the map, which, as usual for Luanti games, extends very very far away.
You start out small but get to increase your industrial empire one building at a time.
At least in theory. In this current stage I cannot recommend this game as it appears to be in an early alpha stage: incomplete, buggy and unpolished. The rails and trains are confusing, the UI is too much Minetest-Game-like (rather than more fitting to an economy game) and sometimes some buildings appear to just not work, or I don't understand them.
The mechanics of the game are often confusing as it seems there are hidden mechanics at play. The behavior of the trains is a great mystery and you don't know or control when they will pick up or drop items.
There are many ways in which your economy can come to a screeching halt and you have no idea why: Is it because the power plant ran out of coal? Is it because a train got stuck or took the wrong turn? Is it because you forgot to tell the workshop what it should do?
The graphics are also disappointing: It literally uses textures from Development Test, for example.
Speaking of instructions, I've updated the help in version 1.1.1 which should hopefully explain things much better.
Thanks for playing! The time limit is intentional. This is a "coffee break" game with the goal to reach a highscore.
Also, the enemies do not respawn so a good player could potentially clear the level (which is not intentional).
If I still care about the game I could maybe add an "endless mode" but I'm not sure how it would work (especially the enemies would have to respawn).
The "official" lore behind the automatic shooting is that your laser eye is malfunctioning and can't be turned off. ;-) I also toyed with the idea of adding "bad" targets you must aware so you have to be careful where you look.
Thanks for mentioning the hitbox problem, in my playtests it never felt that serious tho. But yeah, I wish Luanti would make it easier. I have added it to my TODO list to improve the hitbox when Luanti allows this. Or maybe there is a workaround?
Yes, the cubic rocket launchers are a jam compromise (but also, I'm not a skilled modeller *shrug*). I originally planned to make the rocket launchers with two parts: One base, and one moving part.
Yeah I didn’t want to write the behavior of the enemies into the help, you’re supposed to figure it out on your own (and you did). I think the help has all the neccessary information to play.
The silly bouncing mechanic was by design, in my playtests I figured just walking around the levels made the game more boring and I just wanted to add another quirky mechanic on top of the "laser eye".
In version 1.1.0, I nerfed bouncing a bit so you at least no longer bounce when hitting the bottom of a node (like a tree) to stop infinite bounce loops.
The new version "obelisk v1.0 fixed" works now. This thread can be closed.
You can either use
minetest.<some_function_name>orcore.<some_function_name>. Butluanti.<some_function_name>is clearly wrong and was never officially supported (confirmed by wsor4035). Inlua_api.mdright at the top it also explains this.coreis preferred now, butminetestis also supported. It doesn’t really matter which you pick.This mod, as of v1.0, fails immediately on starting it in Luanti 5.14.0 with the following error:
I think you need to replace the variable
luantiwithcorethroughout your code.(Question: Was the
luantiglobal ever supported in Luanti? It doesn’t seem so or did I miss something?)This mod is super hacky and I don't recommend it. To create such a block, you must manually put a "top slab" node on top of a normal node and you can only get those special top nodes in Creative Mode. The top slab nodes also "blocks" the node above them, because technically the top slab is occupying the node above the bottom slab node. This means you cannot place anything above a stacked slab.
Worse, this mod allows you to place the top slabs anywhere, not just above slabs. If you place a top slab on just any random node, it "sinks" inside that node, causing ugly z-fighting (a graphical glitch).
Finally, this mod is not generic at all, only a few select Minetest Game nodes are supported.
Minetest has been renamed to Luanti, please update the title/name of your mod, the readme file and other related texts. Thanks for reading.
Minetest has been renamed to Luanti, please consider updating the title/name of your pack accordingly. Thanks for reading.
Fun fact: Retro Plus was actually inspired by this texture pack, but I was annoyed it felt so incomplete so I went ahead and added the "missing" textures. Thus, Retro Plus was born.
I have decided to switch from neutral to positive rating because the game has become much more stable after updates. I no longer experience the issues mentioned before so this game can be recommended with peace-of-mind to new Luanti players. I suspect some bugs were fixed in the game directly, but maybe some stability fixes also came after Luanti updates. I (re-)tried this game in Luanti 5.14.0.
While the game is not 100% bug-free, the worst bugs that ruin gameplay (like random dark spots in the world) are gone. Great!
(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version, written by a participant.)
This game (?) is basically a looking-at-numbers simulator, and super confusing. The game is meant to be educational and it does include an in-game help but how it relates to the game is unclear. I also have no idea how accurate any of the information presented to us is; the meaning of the icons is not explained. I suggest readers to be skeptical by default.
You as the player can only interact by producing stuff like adrenaline but what does it do? No idea. Also, that's the ONLY way for you do do something. The rest of the time you can only follow some numbers which I assume are some measurement values of the body.
And this is the whole "gameplay". SUPER confusing. The help is not really helpful; I don't really understand what is the point of clicking the buttons. The help only gives you vague relationships but the info seems incomplete. It seems a lot more is going on behind the scenes than is displayed which makes it harder to understand. I highly doubt this "simulation" is even close to medical reality.
The "blocky" body shown in the background means nothing. You might expect that it would show something interesting like bloodstreams or chemicals moving in the body or whatever, but no. Nothing happens there ever, it's just background decoration.
This game aims to be educational but I believe it failed even at that goal because it does not do a great job in visualizing or explaining things or how stuff interacts with each other.
(DISCLAIMER: Written by a game jam participant)
This game is a direct sequel from Artifact from last year, and has the same feel. Sadly, it is MUCH shorter and not as vast.
I dislike the use of AI for a title image, especially in a game jam.
The first room was surprisingly difficult because it turned out to be a parcours puzzle, so it was irrelevant to the "Line of Sight" theme of this year's game jam. while probably not strictly required, I figured the parcours section of the game were easier with the secret sprinting feature. The game never mentioned you're allowd to sprint. :-/
The second room was more interesting and introduced the first actual "line-of-sight" puzzles. But those puzzles were very basic, you just had to activate a few switches. The hardest part was finding the right spots to walk to and parcouring. Not really enough for a new game, even a short one. Even a short game should at least explore a little bit the unique mechanic it introduces. This game did not do that.
And the third room already ended the game. :-(
I really love the graphics and textures, it's very mysterious and dungeon-ish. The story is not really that interering and frankly forgettable, but maybe that's because the game is too short for the player to "connect" to any of the characters.
BUT! I do believe the Artifact series has potential to become something really great if more time is spent on it. There is something special about this dungeon atmosphere …
Sound design was only a few simple sounds but no music or ambience, although these dungeons really YEARN for some audible ambience.
The cut scenes have improved compared to last year's Artifact. The game uses a formspec trick to force the camera to be fully locked during cut scenes, so the glitchy camera twitching is gone. GENIUS!
Finally, this game is shizophrenic about its own name. Artifact, or Artifact One? Hmm …
I am glad to hear you're planning updates. :-) How big/complex do you roughly imagine the "final" game to be?
(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
The plot and setting of this game is great, especially for a game jam. You have dropped into a hole, and must find out. This is small and simple enough to write a little mini adventure game for and initially the game does deliver on that promise.
Unfortunately, this game is very incomplete, you only get to discover the early part of level design and can interact with a few things, but you can never escape The Gorge. Except you can, actually because you can break random blocks (like pipes) and just nerdpole out of the map. :D (this is probably a bug)
I like the mechanic where you can drag furniture to solve puzzles. Future adventure games can and should STEAL this idea. :D
The interpretation of the theme "Line of Sight" feels kinda forced here. The game justifies it with that you can "see" outside the gorge. Yeah …
For a post-jam version of the game I recommend to fix the obvious bugs (like all the breakable blocks) and the very least add a level exit door, (unless you actually plan to make the world more complex anyway). Even if the game ends up very short, having some closure will make it so much more satisfying.
(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version, written by a participant.)
The plot of this game caught me by surprise, but I like it. The narration makes the abtract world feel like it has purpose.
The mechanic this game introduces is interesting a great interpretation of the "Line of Sight" theme of the game jam. You can't walk/jump but have to click on attractors to be attracted, while avoiding laser fields. This has potential. "Line of Sight" can be taken literally because you can only click on attractors you can directly see. The controls are weird, having to click somewhere else to stop being attracted feels a bit hacky. I would maybe suggest to allow to press Sneak or Aux1.
There are not a lot of levels atm but the few levels that exist were fun. The end was unsatisfying; it came before the game really began.
The speech is generated with Text-to-speech LLMs (=AI). I would normally STRONGLY disapprove of. However, the theme of this game is the digital and the voice feels uncanny corporate. Which actually makes 100% sense here. IMO this use of AI was appropriate because it is actually using technology to fulfil an already well-defined and thought-out task, rather than to just bypass the creative process. I assume the AI was not used to write the actual texts, right?
I like the music. It's not a masterpiece, but it does its job well enough for this game to give a "digital" feel.
The graphics feel somewhat cheap. I know this game is probably meant to be abstract but something just feels … off. With the color scheme, the shapes, etc. That the "lasers" are a full blocks is very confusing to me. The player model is probably just a dummy.
The game contains cut scenes but moving the mouse causes annoying camera twitching. This is a Luanti limitation, but Artifact One found a clever workaround: opening an invisible non-closable formspec.
Overall, I don't think this game is "there yet". With more levels and especially polish it could be nice.
(DISCLAIMER: This review was written for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
I think I played this for about 30 minutes then became bored after I managed to craft the first "light towers". You are thrown in a dark random world full of dead trees and must progressively collect materials and craft buildings to proceed, most importantly the towers of light. You can gather stone, wood metal and most importantly lightshards.
Unfortunately, this game turns out to be too grindy: It seems the only way to get the important lightshards is by killing the bug creatures but you need to kill a LOT of them. It doesn't seem you can mine for lightshards. The fact this game also doesn't have an end or any sense of closure is unsatisfying. Sandbox games only make sense when you have a lot of things to do (like a large list of crafts). For smaller games like this one, adding some mission, goal or closure is key to success, I suppose.
More frustratingly, the bug creatures randomly destroy your structures, so say bye-bye to your furnace you have grinded 20 minutes to get. :-( I don't mind difficult games, but I mind games that are difficult by being annoying.
The bug creatures don't really behave well either: Their movement is not fluent at all.
Also, the game is lacking in atmosphere: No music, no sounds. And the landscape overall feels a bit too repetitive as well so it's unfortunately not immersive.
Conceptually, this could have become a nice game. The idea sounds very interesting on paper, but the excution is sadly not. If the grind was not so bad, it was more atmospheric and the core gameplay would be more focused towards an end.
(DISCLAIMER: This is a review for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
This game offers too little in gameplay.
You just walk on a path and come across various biomes (mostly forest) and occassionally meed 2D NPCs with some very basic throwaway dialogue. That's it. That's the whole game.
This game is basically a map generator with a few NPCs slapped on a path, there is not much real gameplay beyond that, sadly.
I wonder if the author just ran out of time for the game jam. I wonder what the author envisioned for the "full" game.
(DISCLAIMER: This is a review for the game jam version of the game, written by a participant.)
This game makes no sense but I liked it. You are trapped in hyper-minimalist (but not ugly) rooms and must hit the target block with bow and arrows to proceed. The game progressively adds more puzzle elements like switches, arrow (symbols) that deflect the arrow (that you shoot), low gravity, etc.
This game reminded me a lot of the game Alter but it felt a little bit more polished.
It's a really basic puzzle game but the level design has a good progression. Finishing the game took me about 1 hour. I also like this game actually felt "complete" compared to other jam entries.
A few levels were slightly frustrating because they required too strong parcours skills, causing me to fall off over and over again, but the frustration was still in the acceptable range.
This is not the most polished game; there is no music and the sound effects are super basic. I also found the game to be rather buggy, many others have already mentioned the same bugs I also found in their reviews. I wish the bugs will get fixed later.
The first room is basically a classic parcours puzzle. The goal was to disable all 3 generators. You were supposed to jump on the bushes at the wall to eventually climb higher and higher. The final generator was on the balcony high up. Also, the game didn't tell you you can sprint with Aux1 (E key by default).
The line-of-sight mechanic was introduced in the next room, and after that the game already ends before the game has even begun. :-(
I got very excited when I saw this mod. Entities that recreate nodes? Awesome!
But sadly it is unusable in its current state because the API documentation is very insufficient. Only a few data formats are described but not the functions.
Since the release of Luanti 5.13, this mod is obsolete because that version offers GUID for objects natively.
I suppose this mod may still be useful if you need to depend on old Luanti versions, but that’s it. (I still appreciate the work behind the mod tho.)
The code quality of this mod is terrible, the same code is literally repeated 14 times but with different colors instead of just doing a simple for-loop. What's worse, the texture names ignore ALL convention (no mod prefix used), thus polluting a lot of namespaces and creating a headache for texture pack creators and game devs. Also, this mod registers the red bed again which doesn't make sense and just pollutes the item list. Disappointingly, you can't use dyes to re-color beds. For no reason, this mod decided to also make beds bouncy, which is out-of-scope for a mod that claims to only offer new bed colors.
At least the bed textures themselves are good, but that's about it.
Suggestions:
colorful_beds_Update:
So at least the lever thing is done since a while now (good suggestion) but I won’t do the rest. I think prison door and workbench are fine but even if not, I don't trust my graphics skill enough to change it myself so I rather not touch it (the textures were made by jp, after all). At least the bottom face of the workbench has been updated a while ago to match the sides but that’s probably not what you meant.
I am extremely careful with adding more content to this mod to keep it lightweight and not bloated.
I’ve just checked the game sources myself and the files in question no longer exist. I also skimmed the files and found no mention of -NC.
Maybe this -NC problem got silently fixed in the meantime? (I did not do a full check tho.)
EDIT: Oops, you're right. :-( I just found the files myself now.
mods/fishing/sounds/SoundLicense.txtcontains evidence of the files being non-free. Yes, those two files should ideally be removed or replaced.Developer of Hades Revisited here.
This mod looks like a very basic adaption for the game by basically just adding new nodes without really caring about the details of the game. It’s okayish, but I cannot really give it a thumbs up at this point. Depends on how high your standards are.
OK, if you build it correctly, it can look cool. But building the arches and doors is tricky and annoying. The texture rotates with the arch so if you rotate the arch in a particular way, the texture is all messed up. Why not used world-aligned textures? Also, the mod adds two door nodes for each side: Left and right. This is unneccessary, one node should have been sufficed. Other door mods including the game’s own only need one door node because they allow to flip it.
This mod adds wooden and metal doors. The wooden textures match the actual wood in this game, but the metal doors sadly have a color mismatch. For example, tin doors look different than tin blocks.
The in-game door names are bad. Why use the name "door3" in a player-facing text? Just say something like "Tall Door" or whatever instead of this technobabble.
The screwdriver is partially supported, but behaves differently and inconsistently compared to the game's default doors. Punch key rotates the door instead of flipping it. Place key does nothing instead of centering the door. (I understand that support for door centering would need a major rewrite, but still!)
Finally the mod breaks a few unwritten "rules" of the game:
The screenshots are incorrect as they show the nodes of the original mod for Minetest Game. Please upload new screenshots that show this mod in Hades Revisited.
Good suggestion. I’ve implemented it today and this feature will appear in version 2.1.0.
(EDIT: 2.1.0 released. Music volume can be changed now.)
Thanks! Yes, I worked really hard to make version 2.0.0 a reality. :-)
I picked a font which supports a very large amount of characters, thus allowing plenty of translations. I personally think the font looks alright. I guess it’s a matter of taste. I also intentionally picked a serif font to add a bit of a "vintage" vibe to the game.
About the controls text: What screen resolution do you use?
Yes, it’s true: The textures indeed go well together with the islands mod by Termos. Great to be integrated in a game.
Yeah, it would be best if a game provides this mod on its own, unless it already rolls out its own tooltip system for some reason.
But just dropping this mod into a random mod collection is not guaranteed to work because the other mods might not expect such changes. That’s just the nature of modding. I explicitly warned in the description this mod is best suited to be included into game by the way. So I think your complaint about compatibility is a bit unfair. This mod was never meant to be able to be dropped in everywhere. That was never the promise.
Version 1.1.0 provides a few new helper functions to hopefully ease some compatibility pains, but it still requires collaboration of other mods. Again, this is by design.
FYI: I just released version 2.0.0 which is a BIG update compared to 1.4.0 (I don't know which version you played).
The rotating hook now has an overlay and should be more intuitive. Arrows appear on blocks. There still isn't a real story, except now this is a deliberate design decision. Not every game needs a deep story. Let's just say this is "good enough" for me. The whole idea of "pirates + laser puzzles" is obviously very silly to begin with so if you try to take it TOO seriously, it quickly falls apart. :D I'm also afraid that by attempting to write a story, it might just feel too "forced" to the player which is why I ultimately decided against writing a story. OK, I lied: You're a pirate on the search for treasure. That's it. That's the official "story". :P
The extensive help book for the blocks has been moved to another place. I'm not sure if it was a good idea but I will see what other players have to say.
And there are just a ton more changes to the game.
The TNT behavior is actually a bug, not an easter egg. Will be fixed in the next release.
minetest.serializeto store positions instead ofminetest.pos_to_string%sinstead of@1, or outright string concatenationAnd I could just go on and on and on …
PLEASE just learn real progamming already. Vibe coding is a dead end.
I’m happy this game still finds happy players even all those years. :-)
Yeah, I kinda agree, it has become somewhat dated due to the variety of games available now, games that break with many expectations (even the controls). At least the tutorial is not wrong or broken, so I keep it public for now. For MTG and MTG-like games, I think it is still relevant. But yeah, I don’t think this will be my main focus of maintenance. I guess I keep basic life support (=no crashes), but that’s probably it.
I’ve toyed with the thought of maybe making a reboot of this called “Luanti Academy” which acts less of a tutorial and more as a showcase both for players and devs alike. Would be more open about the things it shows, and exposing some of the more obscure things. Some kind of interactive experience. Not sure how it would work in practice.
Useful tool if you need a quick visualization of 2D noise, I think I'll keep it.
Although I believe it could use a few more convenience features, to make it more useful to actually use the noise parameters in stuff like mapgens, or decorations. For 2D noises in mapgens, we frequently check if the noise value is within a particular min/max bounds, so customizing the min/max bounds of the rendered pixel color would be very useful.
The information could use some work as well. To make it more "scientific", it should have a gradient showing the meaning of the pixel values, as well as the axis directions (X, Z). Tooltips would also go a long way.
Very strange this is a game and not a mod. I would like it more as a mod. Anyway, this is an overall thumbs up from me.
Btw, have you heard of Perlin Explorer? It's the same, but in 3D.
(This review is for version 6-7-2023)
In this game, your task is to fly over the world of lakes, grasslands, deserts and mountains to extract resources by placing buildings like collectors (to collect ore and more), power plants (to make your buildings work), towns and markets (to earn $$$) and connect them with rails. You can start anywhere you like on the map, which, as usual for Luanti games, extends very very far away.
You start out small but get to increase your industrial empire one building at a time.
At least in theory. In this current stage I cannot recommend this game as it appears to be in an early alpha stage: incomplete, buggy and unpolished. The rails and trains are confusing, the UI is too much Minetest-Game-like (rather than more fitting to an economy game) and sometimes some buildings appear to just not work, or I don't understand them.
The mechanics of the game are often confusing as it seems there are hidden mechanics at play. The behavior of the trains is a great mystery and you don't know or control when they will pick up or drop items.
There are many ways in which your economy can come to a screeching halt and you have no idea why: Is it because the power plant ran out of coal? Is it because a train got stuck or took the wrong turn? Is it because you forgot to tell the workshop what it should do?
The graphics are also disappointing: It literally uses textures from Development Test, for example.
Well, ContentDB suggests to flag outdated reviews at the top of each review. *shrug*