Suggestion to bring back terrain and interiors with concept screens

Poll

Should Blockland have its former terrain and interiors back?

Yes
No

Author Topic: Suggestion to bring back terrain and interiors with concept screens  (Read 11512 times)

Hey all,

This is gonna be the best effort to suggest and to convince why the terrain and interiors should be brought back into Blockland again. Maybe its just better to get rid of the shadows and shaders and to introduce an anti aliasing option with water reflection. The Torque Game Engine terrain still looks outstanding with the anti aliasing and it could make Blockland up to date with other Indie games out there again, but in its own unique shape and form like Minecraft is. I really call out for a 'Great Reset' update for Blockland to roll back the shadows and shaders, and roll out an update (terrain and interiors, anti aliasing and water reflection) that will keep Blockland up and running for the decade to come. This simple features will explode the retail sales and keep people addicting again to Blockland, in a positive way speaking.

This features would not only make the terrain and interiors standout much better but bricks too! So even brick creations will look outstanding. If the suggestion above wont blow you away, wait until you see the differences in the pictures below. The newly introduced features WILL make Blockland look better and it will motivate people to make new, more realistic maps. Can you imagine an oil rig on an ocean map and let your fantasy go wild with building a brick boat next to it? Or having a team deathmatch on a terrain map where you can see the players much better in the distance instead of looking at a 10 pixel shadow block?

However, there is still a Golden Era waiting in the future for Blockland and its up to Badspot to make the choice.

Click the video to see how this concept looks like in animation

Terrain differences when water reflection and anti aliasing is introduced











Interior differences when anti aliasing is introduced - The aggressive pixel line is smoothed out and interiors look much better and more realistic, and it depends on the interior drawing skills of the person










Look how well rendered the ship is in the last picture with anti aliasing and the water is reflecting its environment a bit.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2022, 02:07:39 PM by Antares »

this is why someone should port blockland to t3d :D
if terrain ever gets brought back it should also have a max size field so you're not limited to a 256x256 grid

You might have to make a change.org petition and post it to the BCC discord for people to sign to show any interest in bringing maps back. But even then, trying to get Badspot to update this game is going to be a task in itself.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2022, 07:10:36 AM by RallyBlock »


Looks nice, but still want day/night cycle. I don't even care about the "shadows" part so much, as I generally keep them disabled, I just really want to keep the day/night cycle. It's nice for RPG servers and stuff

Looks nice, but still want day/night cycle. I don't even care about the "shadows" part so much, as I generally keep them disabled, I just really want to keep the day/night cycle. It's nice for RPG servers and stuff
The day and night cycle would still work. Age of Time has a day and night cycle too (older version), but it still looks great with the terrain and interiors. See Age of Time v29 for example, another game by Badspot.

The day and night cycle would still work. Age of Time has a day and night cycle too (older version), but it still looks great with the terrain and interiors. See Age of Time v29 for example, another game by Badspot.
Yeah I've thought about that. Haven't played AoT in forever, but yeah, would be really neat to see both the terrains and daycycle in blockland

Yeah I've thought about that. Haven't played AoT in forever, but yeah, would be really neat to see both the terrains and daycycle in blockland

Compared to the day and night cycle in Age of Time v3, the transition of lighting on the players look much better in v29. Would be cool to see it in Blockland as well.

this is why someone should port blockland to t3d :D
if terrain ever gets brought back it should also have a max size field so you're not limited to a 256x256 grid

Having a limited terrain size is still better. If you look at games that have a bigger game map, ninety nine percent of the time those areas never see a player. It would be unnecessary to load unused areas of the map. The unnecessary load can better be used to put in more detail in the map such as trees, foliage, interiors, etc. The maps in TGE kept the game compact and the players were closer to each other. The playing area was much more fun and cosy.

You might have to make a change.org petition and post it to the BCC discord for people to sign to show any interest in bringing maps back. But even then, trying to get Badspot to update this game is going to be a task in itself.

Badspot replies once in a while / months in private messages if you have serious questions about the engine code or if there are any problems with the game or website.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2022, 02:18:26 PM by Antares »

if you want maps back you're going to have to do it yourself because there is 100% no way badspot will ever do this

if you want maps back you're going to have to do it yourself because there is 100% no way badspot will ever do this

this.

there is no incentive to bring back terrain, not a lot of people play the game and literally nobody is going to make use of terrain, make maps or make builds on maps when there is no one to play with

a quote from badspot from an old thread:

"Man, Kompressor pulled that one BS marketing line and people have been hounding me on it for years.  The maps sucked balls, ran like stuff, looked like stuff and just made everyone run around jacking off over how many half-assed round terrain brush tribes map rejects they could stuff into the add-ons folder before it burst.  Plus the GL code for terrain/interiors was a nightmare.  Have you ever noticed that no one ever increased the texture size for torque terrain?  That's because it's goddamn impossible.  There was no way we were going to get shaders to work with terrain/interiors and there's no way the game would continue to sell looking like a bargain bin title from 2001.  Less than 15% of servers even used terrain based maps - the whole "oh maps were the best evar" bullstuff is just misplaced nostalgia from a particular age group. "



this.

there is no incentive to bring back terrain, not a lot of people play the game and literally nobody is going to make use of terrain, make maps or make builds on maps when there is no one to play with

a quote from badspot from an old thread:

-snip-
I have found the quote. This was posted way back in 2014 and he does have indeed a point there. The problem with Torque engine has always been that you have to be creative, because TGE is so limited when it comes to game developing. In case you missed it from the GarageGames community, the water shader did in fact work with the terrain and interiors - the Modernization Kit for TGE is an example of this.

The suggested anti aliasing feature is to create more realistic depth and get rid of the pixels that make the game still look like old. When you combine the anti aliasing and terrain and interiors, you could have a new shining game and a final version. The modding community can then steamroll again with making more realistic maps, better then we had before 2012.

The problems with maps before their removal was in my opinion that low quality textures was also a problem. There is a sort of ghetto fix that if you use the right high quality textures and shrink them to 256x256, everything is still looking good. Chervorzk is an example of this. Back in the old days when I played, there were servers hosted with terrain maps for Team Deathmatch and Freebuild. It was kinda 50/50, there was a group that liked the Slate maps (e.g. desert, winter, rain, sea and grass version) and the other group hosted servers with terrain and interior maps (e.g. Bedroom, Kitchen, GSF maps and Slopes). There were always people playing, no matter which map was actually hosted.

But like I have said, the choice is up to Badspot. If I were a game developer I would at least have worked out a prototype of the suggested ideas and see how the community would respond to it.

Badspot replies now and then if you have questions about the engine code or if there are any problems with the game or website.
this has not been true since 2020 post rce update, as his last post was march 2021, all the posts hes made since the update were moved topics and one requested bump, and he regularly goes months inactive (last active aug 14 2022 as of this post)
« Last Edit: November 26, 2022, 01:39:03 PM by Conan »

this has not been true since 2020 post rce update, as his last post was march 2021, all the posts hes made since the update were moved topics and one requested bump, and he regularly goes months inactive (last active aug 14 2022 as of this post)
I was talking about the private messages. He sometimes replies if he wants too, but not very much.

this has not been true since 2020 post rce update, as his last post was march 2021, all the posts hes made since the update were moved topics and one requested bump, and he regularly goes months inactive (last active aug 14 2022 as of this post)
was going to say he would private message but antares just posted lol

was going to say he would private message but antares just posted lol
Yea, I fixed the sentence now to avoid confusion. I was writing that message when I was really tired.