Blockland Forums > General Discussion
The future of Blockland
Demian:
--- Quote from: Wedge on February 08, 2012, 12:23:58 AM ---Making maps is not fun
Everything about maps is archaic. Making them just sucks. You use a wide variety of tools that were never meant to work with each other. All of the BSP geometry editors feel like a trip back to 1999, and trying to do it a more modern way using Google Sketchup or something requires you to jump through even more programs and exporters. Making maps is entirely non-intuitive, and the learning curve is pretty steep. I know what it's like to try and pick up mapping when you're 15 with no background in 3D design because I did it too. Making stuff for the game, in fact, any game, shouldn't be like this. I love making settings that people enjoy, but I'm personally frustrated by how stuffty the tools are.
The problem is these tools were written by programmers for other programmers. They weren't designed by GUI people, or usability people, or graphics artists, they were designed by software engineers. In my experience I've very rarely seen a sofware engineer design anything with a GUI, they pretty much make console applications for everything. Trying to get a GUI out of them is like trying to pull teeth out. That's a different issue that's not really related though.
Most people play on slate anyway
It's hard for me to justify all that effort of making a map when most people play and build on slate anyway. It makes sense though, I don't blame them. This is a sandbox game, you can do whatever you want, but it's clearly aimed at construction and slate is really the best option for construction. It's also open to every other gamemode too, if you want an RPG, or DM, or a racetrack, you just build it, and anybody can do it. Probably the only thing it doesn't do well is skiing, but we could fix that with better skis and some more slopey bricks. I love skiing too, it's the first thing I ever did when I got Blockland, but it's not like this update will kill skiing forever, you'll just have to do it differently.
We try and make interiors look like bricks anyway
I've noticed that most mappers today try and make their maps looke like bricks. They try and line up with bricks so people can build in and with the structure. They use brick like textures. Really the only reason they're even using interiors is because they can squeeze out better performance for big things like cities.
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Th- I me- woah. It's like you took words right out of my head. Even the part about map making I have extremely similar experience with. Thank you. A magnificent post.
Isjix:
I think making maps was fun IMO but it was really complicated and slow, Especially for blockland. Most of everything I made didn't get finished.
Sp1vo:
What about the water??
TwenteFreak:
--- Quote from: Sp1vo on February 08, 2012, 03:13:27 PM ---What about the water??
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If you mean the water in the terrain it will be gone too.
Water bricks will still be there in the new version.
Treynolds416:
Somebody needs to make a program to convert the outlines of a map into bricks.
That way, your hard work can essentially be converted into bricks for v21