I'm an older user. I was active on this game from around 2009-2011 and some patchy intervals up until 2014. I used to make these fantastic Medieval RPG games that gathered quite the following back then! However, I was mainly using VCE to do it, and some of you may know that this system had troubles with variables and messages getting messed up on the network and crossing over between players, making huge aspects of my games unplayable. I ended up quitting out of frustration multiple times.
Of course, these were the best times of my life and I am currently in my third year of college doing a degree in game design/software development, still trying to pursue that feeling. I know I could personally now have the ability to ditch VCE altogether and implement my own version of the game, should I ever find the time, but it lead me to think about a few things.
Blockland is an incredible educational tool. It gave me a serious edge on all the others in my class because it thought me about the basics of how code worked, mostly from the VCE add-on, from an early age (13). Why isn't this type of add-on default? Blockland is a sandbox game, and you can get no further sandbox than if you implemented a variable system like this one. This game was my creative outlet for a very long time.
I check in on the forums to see if there has been any updates, and well... just look at the development section on the forum. All recent updates appear to be bug fixes. I appreciate that Badspot may have lost interest in this game and that is completely acceptable; he's a human being and he can do whatever he wants. However, this game has incredible potential, as both an educational tool and a creative sandbox game of the ages, and to promote Blockland to it's true glory as a game requires a few changes.
I propose that these changes are made:
- An intercommunication system within blockland is necessary. Just like RTB, but run on the master server. Nothing brings a game together like community, whether it be good or bad.
- A default variables system that works via the in-game event system - maybe even having a checkbox on the events interface that allows "Advanced Events" which will trigger the ability to use client and server side variables with conditional events (if statements) within your server.
That is my two cents on the matter. If you support what I'm trying to get at here, drop a post and discuss it further.
P.S. Blockland has given me direction in life; like seriously, if it wasn't for Blockland I don't think I'd ever have gotten into Game Design and I'd probably just be doing some stupid loving Arts degree at the moment, if even. I promise that if neither of these things are implemented by default that I will create one of these as an add-on for Blockland - but you'll have to wait a year or so; college is hard and I must devote my time to my personal life before I can help others.
Thanks for reading.
