The "screenshot" with the name "default" looks like a fake to me. Is this a real screenshot? If yes, I wonder how you achieved the shadows like this.
I guess this image is actually a Blender render. If this is the case, this image violates screenshot rule 7.2 "Screenshots must depict the actual content of the package in some way, and not be misleading.".
I have been a long-time vocal critic of MTG, and for a number of reasons. This post serves as a summary. Review for version: 5.5.0
The biggest problem, tho, is that MTG just "feels" incomplete. In essence, MTG is a Big Empty Sandbox that Jim-Stephanie Sterling talked about on the Jimquisition. Meaning, the world is large, but the number of different things you can do is very small. It thus feels "empty".
So what can you do? You can explore the world, but the biomes don't offer special items that advance the game (except food, maybe). You can go mining, but it's easy to get to the best ore, the diamond ore. You can farm blocks and build, and you can farm wheat and cotton. And this is ... mostly it, apart from some smaller features. Needless to say, a new player will have explored all the major features fast. Not being able to do various different things is the death for any sandbox.
Thus, you run out of new things to do in MTG fast. Once you get the best tools, farmed some resources, built some things, that's all the game offers, basically. MTG is fine if you really only care about raw creative building. The selection of blocks is fine, and people did build amazing things in MTG.
But IMHO, the standalone MTG is completely uninteresting as a game. It is, however, extensively used for servers, but in a heavily modded form. As a basis for servers to add mods on, MTG has done its job well. As a basis for modders, MTG does an OK job.
But most players want more than just a raw sandbox. MTG does not deserve its special status as a default game and should therefore lose it. That MTG is still the default game is the single-most damaging thing to the whole community, because it makes such a bad first impression.
Thankfully, development focus has mostly moved away, as MTG is currently in "maintenance/bugfix-only" phase.
Full disclosure: I did contribute some smaller features and bugfixes in the past and also a translation. But not the big stuff.
I agree with the technical criticisms of MTG, and I have been a vocal critic of MTG for a long time, so I don't need to add here.
But that weird detour/rant about free software was unneccessary. This attitude of "normal people just don't care about free software" is toxic imho. Normal people don't care about their freedom until they get sued by a megacorporation for copyright infringement. :D
It's a mentality thing as well. Society teaches people that it is "normal" that "everything" is copyrighted and that you, the stupid average user, have no rights while megacorporations have all the rights.
That having said, free software is NO excuse for why MTG sucks. :D
Dethroning MTG is also one of my long-term goals.
Thankfully, MTG is officially in bugfix-only mode now, so this at least forced people to divert resources elsewhere.
Sadly, the so-called "Chest with Everything" excludes items in the not_in_creative_inventory=1 group (unlike in DevTest), therefore this mod is basically just a clone of the Creative Inventory found in many games. That's not really an improvement.
For development purposes, it's better to really show all things, even the "forbidden ones" so it's easier to test how they behave.
If you're worried about security, only allow players with the 'give' priv to take items.
This mod is more meant as a starting point for games to use and maybe modify.
As this mod only looks at the raw item definitions, the information it can use is indeed rather limited. Although stuff like digging speed can be extracted easily, things like the meaning of an item requires actual development from the game or mod developers. Obviously, this mod can’t just automagically figure out what an item is meant to do.
Absolutely nothing in my post is factually incorrect. Since one component of xdecor is non-free, xdecor as a whole can not be treated as free. This is pretty standard interpretation of free software / open source all across the board. It's also ContentDB's interpretation.
-NC is widely accepted as a non-free license clause in the community, both according to free software and open source definition. Yes, ContentDB allows -NC, but ContentDB also (correctly) classifies it as non-free.
I am not discriminating xdecor for being non-free. ContentDB is. I have no influence over how ContentDB treats packages.
Tell me what I am supposed to do: Deliberately choose a wrong license to get rid of the "non-free" status, although it's not the true license of this package? That doesn't make sense.
I agree that more content would be nice, that's what I like to do as well. I have lots of notes and drafts to what this game will become. As this game is still officially in the alpha stage, there might be drastic changes (I hope!). I think I will continue development rather soon, in the last months I was busy with Lazarr! (still not happy with that game, oh well... :( )
Content-wise, this game still has not much, I agree, so I like to especially explore the whole 'terraforming' aspect more. It's still very sandbox-style, but I think any good sandbox needs to give the player some stuff to do. It's not enough that the world is "big", the world also has to offer you things to do. :-)
As for being hard, this is not really intended, it's not really meant as a survival game. The current difficulty mostly comes from not really knowing how to proceed in the first place, and from slow progress overall; the README explains basic things but I want to make this information more accessible since many key things are not obvious.
This ContentDB entry had the wrong license set. There are multiple media licenses mentioned in LICENSE (per-file), so I picked the most restrictive license from the LICENSE file (CC BY-SA-NC) to trigger the red "non-free" warning.
Well, my excuse is that this was a rating for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam, and I wanted to rate the games for the game jam specifically. So this was kind of a special case. It feels weird that you can't give thumbs down for broken games for the game jam.
Anyway, I have decided to try it again, but this time managed to make this game work somehow. I don't know how. Here is my new rating: Thumbs down.
Reason:
Okay, so the game looks pretty nice, the graphics are really cute. I really like the minimalist landscape and how you used sky color to your advantage. Using the few tools that gives Minetest in such a creative way is something I really appreciate! :)
Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't really stable or reliable. The game runs a bit too slow. The idea is great, flying through the world and collecting coins. But performance is poor. The balloon often doesn't react too fast enough to move left or right. And many of the bonuses are placed in a way that you always just miss them. Not sure if intentional.
But the worst problem is this: If your ballon flies very fast, you constantly bump into unloaded terrain, making the game very errating (sadly) and unfun. The performance problem is so bad that it ruins the fun, sadly. :-(
Apart from that, the game would have actually be nice. The game is pretty complete, it's just too laggy. If the game would not be so laggy, I would have given it a thumbs up. But it also gets boring pretty fast. :-(
This might be a limitation of Minetest (because the balloon moves VERY fast at one point), but is still unfortunate. But on the other hand, maybe some trick like preloading the whole level would have done the trick, not sure.
Okay, I can solve now. You forgot to add paramtype="light" for the nodes with broken lighting (like glass and nodeboxes). :D See lua_api.txt.
the game does have a mechanic to avoid consecutive repetitions
That might be true, but it doesn't seem to prevent a "close repetition" like "Building A, Building B, Building A" which happened once to me. Maybe when one builidng was used, "block" for X rounds before it is allowed again. (this obviously requires many more schematics in general for it to work)
No, you didn't understand. I was simply not able to climb up a single step AT ALL, and thought the level was broken. Now after I saw the video, I saw the reason: I thought I was supposed to climb up the vine but this is actually not possible. The game actually wanted me to climb up with flower, although with "climb" the game means "walk forward". "climbing" in Minetest usually means "climb upwards" (like a ladder) so obviously I ran into the first vine I saw the whole time, you know, like an idiot. >_>
Yeah, the later levels have better graphics, I still don't understand why the tutorial levels couldn't look nice either. But yeah OK, time constraint and all that.
So after trying the first "real" level, I still only feel frustration. The whole Minetest collisionbox thing becomes a problem here. Trying to "climb" up often means in practice I bump into invisible walls and I have to find an practically invisible path to get to the goal. Really frustrating to me, I had to stop quickly after because I could not take it anymore, sorry. That's more than just difficult, it's like trying to figure out where the game "allows" me to walk, and where it blocks me. The inconsistency is the most frustrating part. Sometimes you can walk up super steep plant just fine, and sometimes a relatively smooth hill stops you dead in your track for no logical reason. You are actually blind to the world, as the plant meshes are deceiving you. :-(
This game could have probably worked out better for me if the collision handling would be better and more "logical". But it also seems like you bumped into a Minetest limitation here (collisionboxes). The collisionboxes might just be too imprecise, that is not your fault. Minetest seems very limiting here in that regard. :-(
Still, putting this game together in this fork seems pretty impressive. Just these highly complicated collisionboxes alone … That must have been a lot of work.
Graphics are minimalist, and the player graphic / hand is completely missing. Nothing against minimalism, but the graphics also lack basic effects or animations. Everything is completely static. There are no effects at all, it's literally just normal cubes. Meh, it feels too cheap to me.
Sounds DO exist (sorry, I must have turned sound off) but I think they're meh. Also, I think there could be more, since many events (like level complete, or WALKING) are silent. There's no environmental sounds or a theme music of any kind, the game is completely silent most of the time, which just adds to the feeling of boringness.
The only good thing about this IMO is that the game is in a sense "complete". However, I feel like it is TOO small, especially too few levels. I would have expected more for something that had 3 weeks time. All of the criticisms I have could have been easily fixed during that time period, but weren't. The amount of levels is very low.
Sorry for the harsh words, but I honestly did not enjoy the game, these are my honest feelings about it. I don't think I have huge interest in a version that has more levels, unless this game is like reworked completely.
(You might say I'm just salty because my game lost and yours won but that's not true. I don't like my game either, I had terrible time management, lol.)
Then the mirroring isn't implemented 100% clearly. It works most of the time BUT I could manage to teleport myself at least partially "into" blocks a couple of times. Given that this is the essential "selling point" of the game, this is bad. Also another annoying thing, when you have to know precisely where you will "mirror", you have to "guess" sometimes because it's hard to count the single squares when you are on the far side of a mirror.
I noticed that when you used up all the samples, you must start COMPLETELY over. No way, this is just mean, there's no good reason for that. You're just forcing to replay the levels the player already solved. It doesn't make sense. This should have been per-level, not per-game. Or maybe not limiting the mirroring at all. Since no level makes use of the "you're only allowed to mirror X times" restriction. A saving feature is also lacking, but it probably doesn't matter given the game is very short.
And my criticism with lack of game elements stands. The two game elements are basically "solid cube" and "diggable cube". So the placing of the diggable cube gets boring fast. It just appears on the other side, meh. In some levels I had the feeling I could instantly see the solution, but doing the solution was a chore because of the weird jumping mechanic. This is not fun for me.
And there is zero indicator that at least help you seeing where the stuff would go on the other side, like a preview, so you can see before clicking.
I think only 2 elements just aren't enough to be interesting for a long time.
Okay, since this game is the Game Jam winner (congrats!), I decided to play it again to give it another chance.
My rating does not change.
First of all it turned out the level I was stuck in was not broken, there were just blocks hidden behind ... Whoops.
Sorry, I still dislike this game. Why? Well, I just don't think the whole game concept just works out for me. So, the idea with the mirror seems interesting to me, but the way it is executed is what I don't like.
Levels:
Meh. So the first levels introduce the concept (obviously), easy enough. But then it just feels like a bit of simple thinking is needed and that's the level. The levels are all a little different each other but overall I still don't like them, the whole "you must constantly look how the other side of the mirror looks like" concept just does not work out for me. It is annoying to check, count squares, to get the blue cubes to be placed correctly.
I really hate the levels in which you have to jump and run / parcours. I really hate the levels in which you have to finetune your jumping skils.
This is such a chore, when you jump and mirror, your jumping direction is suddenly wrong, during the jump. This is highly annoying and doesn't add to the puzzle skills at all, let alone parcours skills. Chainging your jump direction mid-jump is super infuriating.
Some of the levels are based on random guessing, basically. You try to mirror blindly and hope you end up in some interesting hidden room. This gets VERY frustrating when you have to do this blind mirroring over and over again, like in a maze, except you have limited samples. I honestly skipped those levels. I basically knew the solution but got too bored to actually do it.
That review doesn't say much. The game was not intended as an education game. This idea was completely random. I woke up one morning and bam! I had the idea for this game. And it is literally meant as a simple puzzle/thinking game, education was not the goal at all.
Unfortunately, I had the game idea at the FINAL DAY before submission time, this is why it is so incomplete. It's a miracle this game is even playable!
I plan a post-game jam version 2.0 which will be (hopefully) much better and more complete because I am NOT happy how the game jam version turned out.
Thank you. Yeah, I agree the CONCEPT of the game feels fun, I realized that when I made the levels. The reason why there is no saving because I ran out of time. I procastinated until THERE WERE LITERALLY LESS THAN 12 HOURS!!! :D
I just don't like how the game actually ended up.
I am surprised this is even playable. :O I crunshed like mad. It was hard, but I am happy it's even playable. I did not expect to win with this incomplete game.
Please stay tuned for version 2.0, this will be the REAL game (hopefully) with saving and all the other missing features, and polish, levels, etc.
Thanks for the kind words, but the game ended up incomplete (I had the game idea in the FINAL DAY) and I'm not happy with the game jam version. Level 9 turned out to be unsolvable, I screwed up (SORRY).
But to be honest, I would NOT recommend version 1.2 (the game-jam version) to my friends right now (nor my foes), it's way too unprofessional and shoddy that was literally cobbled together under stress in <12 hours.
But I fell love with the game concept. You will be excited to hear I DO plan a post-jam version, version 2.0, which will (hopefully) be much better, be more complete, more piraty, more professional, more polished, more of everything. Obviously a saving feature that the game's missing will be added as well.
The puzzles were mostly about learning how to use the screwdriver, so it gets educational points in this regard.
Hahaha, what kind of bullshit positivity is that? NO, the screwdriver mod I chose was a TERRIBLE idea, I probably should have picked screwdriver2 (I had no time to code my own). I SCREWed up by choosing the SCREWdriver mod. Pun indended! :P
The game needs to stand on its own, it's not a Minetest Game tutorial.
Anyway, I literally chose this mod because I needed a rotation thingie FAST. This was the only reason.
Like I said, level 10 is inaccessible, so I eagerly await the challenge that maybe lacked a bit in the previous levels. I wasn't able to see much once night came, so that's a problem.
The reason for why I screwed up? Well, I started coding LITERALLY IN THE FINAL DAY. It's a miracle this game is even playable (that is an achievement in itself, even if the game sucks right now). I wasn't aware that the sun moves, thanks. I should probably force the sun/moon speed to 0.
Interesting you like the "sea atmosphere", it's based on a simple ocean sound from Freesound. Other reviewers did NOT appreciate the pirate theme, but I guess this is kind of a matter of taste (I still think it can be improved massively; I guess I might add flying seagulls and parrots for ambience later, simple pirate NPCs etc.).
Stay tuned! There will be post-jam development and I want to make this into something real, and not this sorry excuse for a game that this is right now. Yeah, I don't like my own submission, I'm just glad it's playable.
Oh yes, the screwdriver. I KNOW! I just picked the first rotating mod and ran with it because I needed something FAST! Why? Because I had this game idea literally in the FINAL DAY. Procastination is bad. :-(
And everything you see in this game, everything that is bad about this game (I AGREE with the thumbs down) is due to the fact that putting a game together in like 12 hours is VERY hard. It's a mircale it's playable at all. :D
But thanks for the harsh words, because they are true.
I agree with everything you said, except the thumbs up. :D
I have the same criticisms of my own game.
I would have given the game a thumbs down.
I am aware of all of the issues, I just RUSHED the development in the FINAL DAY because I procastinated. :-( So obviously there's incompleteness.
Please stay tuned for a future version, because I do like the game idea (just not the mess of a game jam version, lol)
I agree with everything you said. My problem is I procastinated too much and everything I made was put together in the VERY LAST DAY. :O
It was an absolute CRUNSH. And yes, I do plan to make a more complete and better version of this soon. Stay tuned! <3
I did put effort into the game, tho. I crunshed like crazy to make it BARELY playable in the first place, since I had the game idea in the FINAL DAY. Procastination is bad, lol.
So I have very hastily put something together. I am proud it was even playable in the first place (given the short time I had left), but obviously the game ended up incomplete with LOTS of rough edges. I am NOT proud of my procastination. :D
Everyone who gave a thumbs down to this incomplete "game" is right, and everyone who gave a thumbs up is wrong.
And yes, the fact there's not even an icon is something I'm REALLY not proud of. But my priority was to make it playable ASAP, it's very hard to do if less than 12 hours remain. :D And then I just forgot the icon thing, although it would have been a matter of seconds. :-( Time management was a disaster, and this is completely my fault. :(
I agree this game is bad in the current status, but I do plan to turn it into a real game post-jam.
I agree with everything you said, and I would have the exact same criticisms.
This game was hastily put together in the FINAL day, I just BARELY managed to make it playable at all. I'm proud of the fact this game is playable in the first place. (But I'm not proud of my procastination, lol.) But yes, the game sucks right now, lol.
The screwdriver was an emergency solution because I needed something that works. Obviously a more convenient rotation method is neccessary. And obviously I didn't have much time for good level design in the final day. ;)
But I kind of fell in love with my game idea now, I continue to work on this to turn it into a proper game with the neccessary polish, sounds, and better levels.
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
I appreciate this submission I like to see more parcour games in general, so thank you for that. :-)
This one in particular is too basic and too abstract for my taste. In 3 weeks time, more levels and especially more interesting elements should have been possible. This feels like many of the classic parcour maps the Minetest community has seen over the years. So it fails to stand out. Parcour maps from Inside The Box are generally more engaging because of better graphics and soundtrack.
The graphics … they are just too abstract for my taste. Or rather, to minimalist. Idk, it's not just something I like.
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
This is one of the few game jam submissions that are actually PLAYABLE. Really important, many people did not get that far (and thus gained lots of thumbs down from me, sorry. :-( ). And this game feels complete, with multiple levels, a menu and everything you expect. Even just 1 level would have been enough for me, but you went with multiple. Nice!
So yeah, this is a classic bomberman clone with everything you expect from it. I don't know what else to say, but I just like it. I think the execution is done nicely. I'm missing a singleplayer mode, but it's okay since multiplayer seems to work.
I also can't remember any bugs. The game isn't really great, but it's kinda good in my eyes.
The menu is done very well, it has many features, even an in-game help is provided (something that many games with much MORE time to work in lack!). I know how much boring work it is to put a good menu together, and you did it completely within the time. I highly appreciate the effort that was put into the menu. Although I think, graphically, the menu is still kinda "meh", from the usability and features standpoint it is good.
Most importantly, this submision perfectly fits game jam's theme: "small game". It's a small yet COMPLETE game. Clear and easy thumbs up.
For post-jam I think more levels would be nice. A singleplayer mode would be very cool. I hope someone will host an actual server of this game someday, that would be cool.
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
It's an interesting concept. The hexagon platforms are a HUGE surprise for something like Minetest. But that's not enough for a good rating. Unfortunately, there's not much to do, it's basically a demo version right now. I played through the whole (demo) game. There are 3 things you can do: Dig "resources" which are colorful cylinders and you use them at the borders of your hexagons to create new hexagons. And occassionally you find new "friends" which are basically traders, they give you new resources. And that's it for now. Hate to say it, but that's not really enough in my taste. Especially the mining and building gets boring rather fast. The concept seems fine for a small game (the game jam's theme) but I think the mining and building activities would be better if they are faster so you don't have to stand on the same spot for a long time. There is no sound, nor are there any effects. The building is very awkward, you have to hit into an invisible spot to build, there is no indicator except a text. The game also gives color somewhat weird name. The "silver resource" is not really silver, etc.
Overall, since this game is too basic right now and just in a demo state, I have to give a thumbs down at this stage. Also the lack of sounds is disturbing.
That having said, I think you struck a quite interesting concept here. If the building and mining aspects get a little more refined, and less annoying, and if there are just more features in general, or more depth, I feel like this game has potential to become something cool.
The game is not very good in the current state, but it COULD be. I will probably look forward for new versions of this game (post-jam) to see if more interesting stuff is being added. If this is extended with the right ideas, this might become something interesting.
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
It's a simple and nice idea, perfect for a game jam focused on "small games". But I don't like the way it got executed. It's just a very minimal snake clone. You need to eat apples and grow, and that's it. That alone wouldn't be a problem, but the controls and camera are extremely awkward. They just don't feel right at all. Especially the camera is a HUGE problem. This really shows the limitations of Minetest. I apprecitate the effort, though. I like it when people experiment with unusual concepts, games that Minetest clearly was NOT made for. And obviously, when you experiment, you fail sometimes.
I don't understand this mod. This just seems a complicated way to do "/set time_speed 0".
This is very simple but also pretty interesting and fun. It works well with many games. I tried it in my Repixture game and it works like a charm.
It's fun to slowly but surely build your island and it's exciting when you finally get an important item like a sapling or dirt. Good mod.
The "screenshot" with the name "default" looks like a fake to me. Is this a real screenshot? If yes, I wonder how you achieved the shadows like this.
I guess this image is actually a Blender render. If this is the case, this image violates screenshot rule 7.2 "Screenshots must depict the actual content of the package in some way, and not be misleading.".
https://content.minetest.net/policy_and_guidance/
If this is not a real screenshot, please remove it. Or replace it with a real screenshot that looks nice.
This package violates the screenshot rule 7.2 "Screenshots must depict the actual content of the package in some way, and not be misleading."
https://content.minetest.net/policy_and_guidance/
The first image is an idealized "box art", not a screenshot. Please remove it or put an actual screenshit in its place. That's all, thanks.
This package violates the screenshot rule 7.2 "Screenshots must depict the actual content of the package in some way, and not be misleading."
https://content.minetest.net/policy_and_guidance/
The first image is an idealized "box art", not a screenshot. Please remove it or put an actual screenshit in its place. That's all, thanks.
This package violates the screenshot rule 7.2 "Screenshots must depict the actual content of the package in some way, and not be misleading."
https://content.minetest.net/policy_and_guidance/
The first image is an idealized "box art", not a screenshot. Please remove it or put an actual screenshit in its place. That's all, thanks.
This package violates the screenshot rule 7.2 "Screenshots must depict the actual content of the package in some way, and not be misleading."
https://content.minetest.net/policy_and_guidance/
The first image is an idealized "box art", not a screenshot. Please remove it or put an actual screenshit in its place. That's all, thanks.
This package violates the screenshot rule 7.2 "Screenshots must depict the actual content of the package in some way, and not be misleading."
https://content.minetest.net/policy_and_guidance/
The first image is an idealized "box art", not a screenshot. It should therefore be removed.
This package probably violates the screenshot rule 7.2 "Screenshots must depict the actual content of the package in some way, and not be misleading."
https://content.minetest.net/policy_and_guidance/
The first image looks like an idealized Blender render, not a real screenshot. It should therefore be removed.
This package violates the screenshot rule 7.2 "Screenshots must depict the actual content of the package in some way, and not be misleading."
https://content.minetest.net/policy_and_guidance/
The first image is an idealized "box art", not a screenshot. It should therefore be removed.
As of version 3.3.0, I hope all of the points should have been addressed now.
Note: The pickaxe dig speed is new in 3.3.0, the other two things were addressed in previous versions.
I have been a long-time vocal critic of MTG, and for a number of reasons. This post serves as a summary. Review for version: 5.5.0
The biggest problem, tho, is that MTG just "feels" incomplete. In essence, MTG is a Big Empty Sandbox that Jim-Stephanie Sterling talked about on the Jimquisition. Meaning, the world is large, but the number of different things you can do is very small. It thus feels "empty".
So what can you do? You can explore the world, but the biomes don't offer special items that advance the game (except food, maybe). You can go mining, but it's easy to get to the best ore, the diamond ore. You can farm blocks and build, and you can farm wheat and cotton. And this is ... mostly it, apart from some smaller features. Needless to say, a new player will have explored all the major features fast. Not being able to do various different things is the death for any sandbox.
Thus, you run out of new things to do in MTG fast. Once you get the best tools, farmed some resources, built some things, that's all the game offers, basically. MTG is fine if you really only care about raw creative building. The selection of blocks is fine, and people did build amazing things in MTG.
But IMHO, the standalone MTG is completely uninteresting as a game. It is, however, extensively used for servers, but in a heavily modded form. As a basis for servers to add mods on, MTG has done its job well. As a basis for modders, MTG does an OK job.
But most players want more than just a raw sandbox. MTG does not deserve its special status as a default game and should therefore lose it. That MTG is still the default game is the single-most damaging thing to the whole community, because it makes such a bad first impression. Thankfully, development focus has mostly moved away, as MTG is currently in "maintenance/bugfix-only" phase.
Full disclosure: I did contribute some smaller features and bugfixes in the past and also a translation. But not the big stuff.
I agree with the technical criticisms of MTG, and I have been a vocal critic of MTG for a long time, so I don't need to add here.
But that weird detour/rant about free software was unneccessary. This attitude of "normal people just don't care about free software" is toxic imho. Normal people don't care about their freedom until they get sued by a megacorporation for copyright infringement. :D It's a mentality thing as well. Society teaches people that it is "normal" that "everything" is copyrighted and that you, the stupid average user, have no rights while megacorporations have all the rights.
That having said, free software is NO excuse for why MTG sucks. :D Dethroning MTG is also one of my long-term goals. Thankfully, MTG is officially in bugfix-only mode now, so this at least forced people to divert resources elsewhere.
The screenshots are hi-res now.
Sadly, the so-called "Chest with Everything" excludes items in the
not_in_creative_inventory=1group (unlike in DevTest), therefore this mod is basically just a clone of the Creative Inventory found in many games. That's not really an improvement. For development purposes, it's better to really show all things, even the "forbidden ones" so it's easier to test how they behave. If you're worried about security, only allow players with the 'give' priv to take items.This mod is more meant as a starting point for games to use and maybe modify.
As this mod only looks at the raw item definitions, the information it can use is indeed rather limited. Although stuff like digging speed can be extracted easily, things like the meaning of an item requires actual development from the game or mod developers. Obviously, this mod can’t just automagically figure out what an item is meant to do.
Absolutely nothing in my post is factually incorrect. Since one component of xdecor is non-free, xdecor as a whole can not be treated as free. This is pretty standard interpretation of free software / open source all across the board. It's also ContentDB's interpretation. -NC is widely accepted as a non-free license clause in the community, both according to free software and open source definition. Yes, ContentDB allows -NC, but ContentDB also (correctly) classifies it as non-free.
I am not discriminating xdecor for being non-free. ContentDB is. I have no influence over how ContentDB treats packages.
Tell me what I am supposed to do: Deliberately choose a wrong license to get rid of the "non-free" status, although it's not the true license of this package? That doesn't make sense.
I agree that more content would be nice, that's what I like to do as well. I have lots of notes and drafts to what this game will become. As this game is still officially in the alpha stage, there might be drastic changes (I hope!). I think I will continue development rather soon, in the last months I was busy with Lazarr! (still not happy with that game, oh well... :( )
Content-wise, this game still has not much, I agree, so I like to especially explore the whole 'terraforming' aspect more. It's still very sandbox-style, but I think any good sandbox needs to give the player some stuff to do. It's not enough that the world is "big", the world also has to offer you things to do. :-)
As for being hard, this is not really intended, it's not really meant as a survival game. The current difficulty mostly comes from not really knowing how to proceed in the first place, and from slow progress overall; the README explains basic things but I want to make this information more accessible since many key things are not obvious.
This ContentDB entry had the wrong license set. There are multiple media licenses mentioned in LICENSE (per-file), so I picked the most restrictive license from the LICENSE file (CC BY-SA-NC) to trigger the red "non-free" warning.
Files that make this mod non-free:
xdecor_enchanting.oggWell, my excuse is that this was a rating for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam, and I wanted to rate the games for the game jam specifically. So this was kind of a special case. It feels weird that you can't give thumbs down for broken games for the game jam.
Anyway, I have decided to try it again, but this time managed to make this game work somehow. I don't know how. Here is my new rating: Thumbs down.
Reason:
Okay, so the game looks pretty nice, the graphics are really cute. I really like the minimalist landscape and how you used sky color to your advantage. Using the few tools that gives Minetest in such a creative way is something I really appreciate! :)
Unfortunately, the gameplay isn't really stable or reliable. The game runs a bit too slow. The idea is great, flying through the world and collecting coins. But performance is poor. The balloon often doesn't react too fast enough to move left or right. And many of the bonuses are placed in a way that you always just miss them. Not sure if intentional. But the worst problem is this: If your ballon flies very fast, you constantly bump into unloaded terrain, making the game very errating (sadly) and unfun. The performance problem is so bad that it ruins the fun, sadly. :-(
Apart from that, the game would have actually be nice. The game is pretty complete, it's just too laggy. If the game would not be so laggy, I would have given it a thumbs up. But it also gets boring pretty fast. :-(
This might be a limitation of Minetest (because the balloon moves VERY fast at one point), but is still unfortunate. But on the other hand, maybe some trick like preloading the whole level would have done the trick, not sure.
Okay, I can solve now. You forgot to add
paramtype="light"for the nodes with broken lighting (like glass and nodeboxes). :D Seelua_api.txt.That might be true, but it doesn't seem to prevent a "close repetition" like "Building A, Building B, Building A" which happened once to me. Maybe when one builidng was used, "block" for X rounds before it is allowed again. (this obviously requires many more schematics in general for it to work)
No, you didn't understand. I was simply not able to climb up a single step AT ALL, and thought the level was broken. Now after I saw the video, I saw the reason: I thought I was supposed to climb up the vine but this is actually not possible. The game actually wanted me to climb up with flower, although with "climb" the game means "walk forward". "climbing" in Minetest usually means "climb upwards" (like a ladder) so obviously I ran into the first vine I saw the whole time, you know, like an idiot. >_>
Yeah, the later levels have better graphics, I still don't understand why the tutorial levels couldn't look nice either. But yeah OK, time constraint and all that.
So after trying the first "real" level, I still only feel frustration. The whole Minetest collisionbox thing becomes a problem here. Trying to "climb" up often means in practice I bump into invisible walls and I have to find an practically invisible path to get to the goal. Really frustrating to me, I had to stop quickly after because I could not take it anymore, sorry. That's more than just difficult, it's like trying to figure out where the game "allows" me to walk, and where it blocks me. The inconsistency is the most frustrating part. Sometimes you can walk up super steep plant just fine, and sometimes a relatively smooth hill stops you dead in your track for no logical reason. You are actually blind to the world, as the plant meshes are deceiving you. :-(
This game could have probably worked out better for me if the collision handling would be better and more "logical". But it also seems like you bumped into a Minetest limitation here (collisionboxes). The collisionboxes might just be too imprecise, that is not your fault. Minetest seems very limiting here in that regard. :-(
Still, putting this game together in this fork seems pretty impressive. Just these highly complicated collisionboxes alone … That must have been a lot of work.
Strange, after I started a new world, the fences have correct lighting now. *shrug*
Is this maybe one of those bugs that only appear when the stars are right? :D
And with broken lighting I mean the fences were pitch black (as if
paramtypeis not set to"light").Sorry, this is all I can say.
Graphics are minimalist, and the player graphic / hand is completely missing. Nothing against minimalism, but the graphics also lack basic effects or animations. Everything is completely static. There are no effects at all, it's literally just normal cubes. Meh, it feels too cheap to me. Sounds DO exist (sorry, I must have turned sound off) but I think they're meh. Also, I think there could be more, since many events (like level complete, or WALKING) are silent. There's no environmental sounds or a theme music of any kind, the game is completely silent most of the time, which just adds to the feeling of boringness.
The only good thing about this IMO is that the game is in a sense "complete". However, I feel like it is TOO small, especially too few levels. I would have expected more for something that had 3 weeks time. All of the criticisms I have could have been easily fixed during that time period, but weren't. The amount of levels is very low.
Sorry for the harsh words, but I honestly did not enjoy the game, these are my honest feelings about it. I don't think I have huge interest in a version that has more levels, unless this game is like reworked completely.
(You might say I'm just salty because my game lost and yours won but that's not true. I don't like my game either, I had terrible time management, lol.)
(Anyway, still congrats for winning. :P)
Then the mirroring isn't implemented 100% clearly. It works most of the time BUT I could manage to teleport myself at least partially "into" blocks a couple of times. Given that this is the essential "selling point" of the game, this is bad. Also another annoying thing, when you have to know precisely where you will "mirror", you have to "guess" sometimes because it's hard to count the single squares when you are on the far side of a mirror.
I noticed that when you used up all the samples, you must start COMPLETELY over. No way, this is just mean, there's no good reason for that. You're just forcing to replay the levels the player already solved. It doesn't make sense. This should have been per-level, not per-game. Or maybe not limiting the mirroring at all. Since no level makes use of the "you're only allowed to mirror X times" restriction. A saving feature is also lacking, but it probably doesn't matter given the game is very short.
And my criticism with lack of game elements stands. The two game elements are basically "solid cube" and "diggable cube". So the placing of the diggable cube gets boring fast. It just appears on the other side, meh. In some levels I had the feeling I could instantly see the solution, but doing the solution was a chore because of the weird jumping mechanic. This is not fun for me. And there is zero indicator that at least help you seeing where the stuff would go on the other side, like a preview, so you can see before clicking. I think only 2 elements just aren't enough to be interesting for a long time.
(to be continued)
Okay, since this game is the Game Jam winner (congrats!), I decided to play it again to give it another chance. My rating does not change.
First of all it turned out the level I was stuck in was not broken, there were just blocks hidden behind ... Whoops.
Sorry, I still dislike this game. Why? Well, I just don't think the whole game concept just works out for me. So, the idea with the mirror seems interesting to me, but the way it is executed is what I don't like.
Levels: Meh. So the first levels introduce the concept (obviously), easy enough. But then it just feels like a bit of simple thinking is needed and that's the level. The levels are all a little different each other but overall I still don't like them, the whole "you must constantly look how the other side of the mirror looks like" concept just does not work out for me. It is annoying to check, count squares, to get the blue cubes to be placed correctly. I really hate the levels in which you have to jump and run / parcours. I really hate the levels in which you have to finetune your jumping skils. This is such a chore, when you jump and mirror, your jumping direction is suddenly wrong, during the jump. This is highly annoying and doesn't add to the puzzle skills at all, let alone parcours skills. Chainging your jump direction mid-jump is super infuriating. Some of the levels are based on random guessing, basically. You try to mirror blindly and hope you end up in some interesting hidden room. This gets VERY frustrating when you have to do this blind mirroring over and over again, like in a maze, except you have limited samples. I honestly skipped those levels. I basically knew the solution but got too bored to actually do it.
(to be continued)
That review doesn't say much. The game was not intended as an education game. This idea was completely random. I woke up one morning and bam! I had the idea for this game. And it is literally meant as a simple puzzle/thinking game, education was not the goal at all.
Unfortunately, I had the game idea at the FINAL DAY before submission time, this is why it is so incomplete. It's a miracle this game is even playable!
I plan a post-game jam version 2.0 which will be (hopefully) much better and more complete because I am NOT happy how the game jam version turned out.
Thank you. Yeah, I agree the CONCEPT of the game feels fun, I realized that when I made the levels. The reason why there is no saving because I ran out of time. I procastinated until THERE WERE LITERALLY LESS THAN 12 HOURS!!! :D I just don't like how the game actually ended up.
I am surprised this is even playable. :O I crunshed like mad. It was hard, but I am happy it's even playable. I did not expect to win with this incomplete game.
Please stay tuned for version 2.0, this will be the REAL game (hopefully) with saving and all the other missing features, and polish, levels, etc.
Thanks for the kind words, but the game ended up incomplete (I had the game idea in the FINAL DAY) and I'm not happy with the game jam version. Level 9 turned out to be unsolvable, I screwed up (SORRY).
But to be honest, I would NOT recommend version 1.2 (the game-jam version) to my friends right now (nor my foes), it's way too unprofessional and shoddy that was literally cobbled together under stress in <12 hours.
But I fell love with the game concept. You will be excited to hear I DO plan a post-jam version, version 2.0, which will (hopefully) be much better, be more complete, more piraty, more professional, more polished, more of everything. Obviously a saving feature that the game's missing will be added as well.
Hahaha, what kind of bullshit positivity is that? NO, the screwdriver mod I chose was a TERRIBLE idea, I probably should have picked screwdriver2 (I had no time to code my own). I SCREWed up by choosing the SCREWdriver mod. Pun indended! :P The game needs to stand on its own, it's not a Minetest Game tutorial. Anyway, I literally chose this mod because I needed a rotation thingie FAST. This was the only reason.
The reason for why I screwed up? Well, I started coding LITERALLY IN THE FINAL DAY. It's a miracle this game is even playable (that is an achievement in itself, even if the game sucks right now). I wasn't aware that the sun moves, thanks. I should probably force the sun/moon speed to 0.
Interesting you like the "sea atmosphere", it's based on a simple ocean sound from Freesound. Other reviewers did NOT appreciate the pirate theme, but I guess this is kind of a matter of taste (I still think it can be improved massively; I guess I might add flying seagulls and parrots for ambience later, simple pirate NPCs etc.).
Stay tuned! There will be post-jam development and I want to make this into something real, and not this sorry excuse for a game that this is right now. Yeah, I don't like my own submission, I'm just glad it's playable.
Oh yes, the screwdriver. I KNOW! I just picked the first rotating mod and ran with it because I needed something FAST! Why? Because I had this game idea literally in the FINAL DAY. Procastination is bad. :-(
And everything you see in this game, everything that is bad about this game (I AGREE with the thumbs down) is due to the fact that putting a game together in like 12 hours is VERY hard. It's a mircale it's playable at all. :D
But thanks for the harsh words, because they are true.
I agree with everything you said, except the thumbs up. :D I have the same criticisms of my own game. I would have given the game a thumbs down. I am aware of all of the issues, I just RUSHED the development in the FINAL DAY because I procastinated. :-( So obviously there's incompleteness.
Please stay tuned for a future version, because I do like the game idea (just not the mess of a game jam version, lol)
I agree with everything you said. My problem is I procastinated too much and everything I made was put together in the VERY LAST DAY. :O It was an absolute CRUNSH. And yes, I do plan to make a more complete and better version of this soon. Stay tuned! <3
I agree.
I did put effort into the game, tho. I crunshed like crazy to make it BARELY playable in the first place, since I had the game idea in the FINAL DAY. Procastination is bad, lol.
So I have very hastily put something together. I am proud it was even playable in the first place (given the short time I had left), but obviously the game ended up incomplete with LOTS of rough edges. I am NOT proud of my procastination. :D
Everyone who gave a thumbs down to this incomplete "game" is right, and everyone who gave a thumbs up is wrong.
And yes, the fact there's not even an icon is something I'm REALLY not proud of. But my priority was to make it playable ASAP, it's very hard to do if less than 12 hours remain. :D And then I just forgot the icon thing, although it would have been a matter of seconds. :-( Time management was a disaster, and this is completely my fault. :(
I agree this game is bad in the current status, but I do plan to turn it into a real game post-jam.
I agree with everything you said, and I would have the exact same criticisms. This game was hastily put together in the FINAL day, I just BARELY managed to make it playable at all. I'm proud of the fact this game is playable in the first place. (But I'm not proud of my procastination, lol.) But yes, the game sucks right now, lol. The screwdriver was an emergency solution because I needed something that works. Obviously a more convenient rotation method is neccessary. And obviously I didn't have much time for good level design in the final day. ;) But I kind of fell in love with my game idea now, I continue to work on this to turn it into a proper game with the neccessary polish, sounds, and better levels.
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
I appreciate this submission I like to see more parcour games in general, so thank you for that. :-)
This one in particular is too basic and too abstract for my taste. In 3 weeks time, more levels and especially more interesting elements should have been possible. This feels like many of the classic parcour maps the Minetest community has seen over the years. So it fails to stand out. Parcour maps from Inside The Box are generally more engaging because of better graphics and soundtrack.
The graphics … they are just too abstract for my taste. Or rather, to minimalist. Idk, it's not just something I like.
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
This is one of the few game jam submissions that are actually PLAYABLE. Really important, many people did not get that far (and thus gained lots of thumbs down from me, sorry. :-( ). And this game feels complete, with multiple levels, a menu and everything you expect. Even just 1 level would have been enough for me, but you went with multiple. Nice! So yeah, this is a classic bomberman clone with everything you expect from it. I don't know what else to say, but I just like it. I think the execution is done nicely. I'm missing a singleplayer mode, but it's okay since multiplayer seems to work. I also can't remember any bugs. The game isn't really great, but it's kinda good in my eyes. The menu is done very well, it has many features, even an in-game help is provided (something that many games with much MORE time to work in lack!). I know how much boring work it is to put a good menu together, and you did it completely within the time. I highly appreciate the effort that was put into the menu. Although I think, graphically, the menu is still kinda "meh", from the usability and features standpoint it is good.
Most importantly, this submision perfectly fits game jam's theme: "small game". It's a small yet COMPLETE game. Clear and easy thumbs up.
For post-jam I think more levels would be nice. A singleplayer mode would be very cool. I hope someone will host an actual server of this game someday, that would be cool.
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
This game insta-crashed on me. Sorry, that's all I can say. Contact me if you want a re-review (once the bugs are fixed post-jam).
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
It's an interesting concept. The hexagon platforms are a HUGE surprise for something like Minetest. But that's not enough for a good rating. Unfortunately, there's not much to do, it's basically a demo version right now. I played through the whole (demo) game. There are 3 things you can do: Dig "resources" which are colorful cylinders and you use them at the borders of your hexagons to create new hexagons. And occassionally you find new "friends" which are basically traders, they give you new resources. And that's it for now. Hate to say it, but that's not really enough in my taste. Especially the mining and building gets boring rather fast. The concept seems fine for a small game (the game jam's theme) but I think the mining and building activities would be better if they are faster so you don't have to stand on the same spot for a long time. There is no sound, nor are there any effects. The building is very awkward, you have to hit into an invisible spot to build, there is no indicator except a text. The game also gives color somewhat weird name. The "silver resource" is not really silver, etc. Overall, since this game is too basic right now and just in a demo state, I have to give a thumbs down at this stage. Also the lack of sounds is disturbing.
That having said, I think you struck a quite interesting concept here. If the building and mining aspects get a little more refined, and less annoying, and if there are just more features in general, or more depth, I feel like this game has potential to become something cool.
The game is not very good in the current state, but it COULD be. I will probably look forward for new versions of this game (post-jam) to see if more interesting stuff is being added. If this is extended with the right ideas, this might become something interesting.
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
It's a simple and nice idea, perfect for a game jam focused on "small games". But I don't like the way it got executed. It's just a very minimal snake clone. You need to eat apples and grow, and that's it. That alone wouldn't be a problem, but the controls and camera are extremely awkward. They just don't feel right at all. Especially the camera is a HUGE problem. This really shows the limitations of Minetest. I apprecitate the effort, though. I like it when people experiment with unusual concepts, games that Minetest clearly was NOT made for. And obviously, when you experiment, you fail sometimes.