I Added Multiple World Layers To My Voxel Game

[@howardvanwaard7330]

When I started watching these videos I'd barely started secondary school, and now I'm years into my own game dev career. Still brings a smile to my face when a new video of yours shows up, and they're still as inspirational as the first times I saw them. Keep it up (:

[@NephPlays]

Now you're making me feel old. T___T But thanks :D

[@zicraftian]

I think this looks pretty darn cool, and I really like the asset/ style of the game. Edit: And wow, this layer concept is awesome, I don't think think I've ever really seen this! Great stuff

[@NephPlays]

Thanks :D

[@OhMyNugget]

Great to see you back on this ❤

[@NephPlays]

Long time no see! Hope you're keeping well.

[@OhMyNugget]

@@NephPlays must be about 9/10 years 👀 and yeah all good my end. Hope everything’s well with you.

[@NullViewer]

:) Made me to smile... when the developer himself got scared of falling off the cloud... :D

[@NephPlays]

When you record so many times, you dont expect stuff like that to happen. Also its a long fall lol

[@Unlighted4K0]

Nice a voxel game like Made in Abyss, in terms of layers, that's really cool!

[@NephPlays]

Working on this did actually make me think of Made in Abyss, i've never seen the show but it seems like a cool idea. (I generally avoid dark anime with child characters, i've never seen madoka or promised neverland for the same reason).

[@jamesrye1590]

super impressive stuff! are you doing all this alone? so much content and huge potential! would be cool to see some sort of large pillars supporting the overworld in the mushroom + lower layers im a music masters graduate, would love to come up with some c418 inspired soundtracks for this if you are looking for that kind of thing? would do it for free as it would be quite fun. let me know!

[@NephPlays]

I definitely want to have some kind of pillars in some of the lower layers probably large formations created from stalagmites and stalagtites meeting. I could technically have artificial pillars too depending on the situation, could be cool.

[@NephPlays]

Regarding the music, it's a bit early for me to be looking for music etc for the game. If you come up with anything though, and post something to your channel, let me know and I might be able to mention it in a video or something and send some people your way.

[@MirkriBiznesmenaIgracha-lr2ce]

You should add sprinting. This is a feature that few dev voxel games implement.

[@NephPlays]

I keep meaning to and forgetting to do it lol, i intend to though.

[@NullViewer]

For some time i am thinking to get into game development. But... my idea is to try to create single decentralized universe of voxel "worlds". Every server can join this "universe" and from the player perspective entire universe is one seamless world. But certain "claims" could belong to some private server owners (chunk data/block updates/block state served by that server). By entering (as player walking into) those claims, some game rules changes - for example, you enter anarchy claim, where hacks are allowed... or you enter "private public" claim, where you can only explore, but can't interact with blocks. Or you can't enter certain "private claims" until you didn't obtain claim owner permission. And so on... Started to learn Erlang for the server side. I know... it's utopic and hard to pull off idea... but... I think there is huge potential. Infinite world with interconnected communities. And horizontally and dynamically scalable. For example... even certain faction of some claim (claim = current server/world) could buy/setup individual servers for their base area for increased contraption performance, better TPS and so on. Still... just... collecting ideas and thinking how to pull that off at concept level.

[@NephPlays]

Its a nice idea, I had a similar idea when i was younger for a decentralised mmo. A "grid" of privately hosted server if you will. But you should keep in mind that it is an incredibly ambitious project for a single developer. Especially if you are only getting into game development. I would reccomend trying to make something much simpler at first, it will help you understand how much longer it takes to make games than you would think it does. Even simple games. If you are looking for games like that though, the old mmo, "second life" is rather like that. You can buy land etc and zones are privately owned with their own rules.

[@k_e_n_n_y_mccormick]

this looks like minecraft, not gonna lie

[@ProteusMega]

Amazing! This shows alot of promise. I hope it amounts to something beyond a learing project (which is often the case). If so please make it platfom agnostic, portable and not using online activation so the game can survive the creator.Oh, and lots of settings for all functions. Please avoid fixed game modes. Instead let the player set their own experience via settings and game rules.

[@NephPlays]

This time around I am committed to fleshing out the game to the point where it is a playable (if somewhat simple) game. So not just creative mode but a survival mode with enemy mobs and bosses and an actual goal. The game is FAIRLY cross platform, it's mainly made using dotnet core. I've had people run it on linux before by installinig some libraries. I plan to target windows mainly but would like to make it run on linux/mac where possible. There are no plans for online activation. In fact, currently the only plan is to release the game as a free game. I would only consider selling it in the future if I felt like it made very significant progress and became a well rounded game. And in that case, it would probably just be a one off purchase on steam or itch. I am planning on having fixed game modes but I plan on having custom game settings too, so it should be possible to customise your experience. I'm also very big on having lots of accessibility options and settings so I wouldnt worry about that. As for the game outliving me, I uh... dont plan on dying anytime soon lol (I get what you mean though). But I mean whenever I release the game, that game should remain available and playable unless I release a new version or if computer hardware makes the game unplayable at some point in the future.

[@ProteusMega]

@@NephPlays You might consider the same model as Dwarf Fortress began with. This is actually somewhat viable if the game capture the players enough.

[@Direblade11]

Omg! Neph!! I remember being so confused when you stopped uploading years ago. Truly a parasocial relationship ... and I missed uploads for like 9 years Edit: idk why, but your falling in this game gave me a weird uneasiness while Minecraft does not

[@Direblade11]

This is where my ideas will go, though I don't have a great idea of what kind of tone or mechanics you want in the game: 1. Giant spider web areas which are common in the hell area and very unlikely in the mushroom caves, complete with 1 giant spider per area... I know there's a guy on YT making a scaleable multi-legged entity which has mapping for each individual foot in MC. 2. Pillars of Sunstone or something in the heaven area. Maybe this is where biblically accurate angels could spawn. Uses for Sunstone could mainly be glowing armour & tools, or even as airship material/Fuel. 3. Giant flower biome common with the sky islands (still with a mushroom understory) that can also rarely spawn individual flowers in the regular overworld. 4. Mineshafts that lead between caves and *can* connect to the next two layers. Ideally made by factoring in endpoints to their generation so a play can be 100% certain that a mineshaft will lead somewhere else. 5. Forts which generate in the main world and mushroom world, containing some variety of different race that's numerous. Maybe mushroom people, or infected peopled when in the mushroom caves. Going with the theme of connection, maybe there could be a teleportation circle somewhere which phases you between the forts. 6. Wizard towers on the skylands, which can be singular, or have multiple ones situated on their own, higher, floating islands that can be teleported to through a circle at the top of the lower tower. This *could* continue long enough to reach into the heaven/cloud layer. P.S. I don't see how you're going to keep the Skylands and above closer to endgame without some sort of barrier. If it has endgame loot people will pillar up to it. I suppose you could lock the loot blocks behind some sort of metroidvania style upgrade found in lower layers, or have bat harpies that live on the bottom of the skylands and spawn more when you're below the skylands on the way up

[@NephPlays]

@@Direblade11 Those are some cool ideas. I think the spider might scare some people off though lol. Having said that I do have potential plans for a world layer that is 10x spookier than that but i'll say no more on that for now. I plan to give heaven kind of a golden theme so you will likely see some kind of golden mobs / blocks there. GIant flowers are planned for the skylands, along with the mushrooms. I'm planning on having some kind of NPCs that can be traded with in the overworld and maybe in the mushroom caves. These would not be hostile though I might be doing goblin encampments etc in the overworld which is kinda similar to what you mentioned. I dont plan on having a hard barrier between the overworld and skylands however I did consider having a soft barrier like spawning mobs similar to what you said. Though tbh, I might make it so the skylands are earlier on in progression but then maybe heaven is harder to get to. I even considered adding a void layer between the skylands and heaven known as the 'stratos' which is just full of clouds but is inhabitated by massive sky dragons (chinese style long serpent like dragons) that fly around very fast and crash into you, knocking you off any pillars you might be building.

[@NephPlays]

That's interersting about the falling. Do you think it's because the world isn't loaded below you or is it just because of me waving the camera around as im falling?

[@Direblade11]

@@NephPlays When it happened my best guess was that I had no solid reference point to ground myself. In Minecraft you have an item or hand that will slide upwards a little along with wind sound when falling. That *might* be enough to stop my worrying. You're probably right/also right that it's just not me seeing anything loaded in as well. I likely get less antsy in Minecraft because I'm so used to it. P.S. I love the sky dragon idea quite a lot. The one suggestion I gave that I'm most partial to is having some rare features making it seem like there is interaction between layers: singular giant flowers might grow on the main world so it looks like the seed fell from the island above, or a blue mushroom in a deeper cave could hint at what's below

[@NephPlays]

@@Direblade11 The idea of interactions between layers is something i've considered, it would be possible for example in this game for a mob to follow you from one world layer into another, this would mean i would have to consider if certain mobs would attack each other, like angels attacking demons etc. I like the idea of having things in one layer foreshadow subsequent layers though, thats a neat concept. I actually watched a show that had a magical realm that partially bled into the real world and thats where the magic in the real world came from, which i thought was a sick idea. So there is always the chance I could end up doing something similar.

[@ReySkywalker2]

Ok but why is it bright underground?

[@NephPlays]

i havent decided on the lighting system yet, i can either do block lighting or dynamic lighting or a combination. Once thats done ill probably make the caves dark and make you require torches to see. Of course there is also a third option, which was the original plan when i made boscaí and that was to not have a lighting system at all, but use atmospheric ambient light, fog and some other effects to give the desired feel in the caverns without actually having a lighting system. And considering there is only one underground world layer that is actually intended to be dark, it would make sense to go with this option. For now I havent decided though.

[@ReySkywalker2]

@@NephPlays Very interesting. Didn’t expect a response so that’s nice. I’m excited to see where this project goes!