Replace Overword With Unique Realms
benjamin-kirkbride opened this issue · 3 comments
Your GTNH Discord Username
beefy_swain
Purpose of this Post
I am soliciting feedback. I understand that the development of this feature would be a huge amount of work and consideration. I am not throwing this over the fence and demanding that people do it for me. I am simply requesting feedback on the idea. What do we like, what do we not like? What concerns do we have? What would need to be decided for it to not be a waste of time for me (or anyone) to work on this more?
TL:DR
I propose breaking the Overword dimension into multiple distinct "realms". Each realm would contain a largely unique set of biomes, flora, fauna, minerals, structures, etc. Travel and logistics between zones would be part of gating and progression, progressing through things like sailing, trains, diesel cargo ships, teleportation, etc.
There also could be different requirements and incentives to establish bases of operation in each realm for instance to extract different resources and process them on site to reduce the amount of cargo that has to be hauled back to the main base. For instance, perhaps processing oil at the desert realm makes sense, but shipping in water to facilitate that is highly advised.
Requirements
- Replace Overworld with Realms
- Give each realm a unique set of biomes, mob spawns, minerals (ores and oil), structures, etc
- Develop a way to transport players between realms
- Develop a way to transport items between realms (inter-realm logistics)
- Balance around realms/Questbook integration
Long Form Proposal
I am proposing several new dimensions, and the removal of the "Overworld" dimension. These dimensions would be referred to as "Realms.
A primary reason that I am proposing this is due to frustrations with exploration being simultaneously too easy and too hard:
- It is too easy, because all you have to do is run around waiting for RNG to bless you with the biome/resource/structure/mob that you are looking for.
- It is too hard, because sometimes it takes you two hours to find a desert for some fucking reason. Anything that is gated by "exploration" is basically a crap shoot of "okay am I going to find this thing in a few minutes or multiple hours and it really kills momentum. Compared to the way the rest of the pack is balanced, it feels unnecessarily.
I am aware that there are things in the game to mitigate this, things like the ore finder wand and different compasses, etc. But these things feel like band-aids on a fundamental problem.
There are other reasons that I think this is a good idea is thematic coherence of biomes: right now you have deserts next to arctics next to swamps. This means that with the ID expansion allowing more than 256 biomes, we could actually take advantage of that in a way that doesn't just mean more random biomes splattered across the Overworld.
Inter-Realm Transport and Logistics
How does one get between realms?
I can think of several options here:
- Finding natural "portals" to the other realms.
- Building a "portal" to another realm.
My preference would to have the "portals" that get built to be themed in a plausibly realistic way (a la Galacticraft), instead of in a way that is overtly magical (a la Nether and Twilight Forest). So for instance, a "portal" could take the form of:
- a train multiblock that goes into a tunnel in a mountain, requiring coal and water, diesel, or EU depending on tech level
- a sailboat multiblock on the ocean, requiring food and other supplies
- a plane multiblock on a runway, requiring jet fuel
- a car/truck multiblock on a road, requiring diesel or gas
- a horse-drawn caravan, requiring hay and food
- a magic portal that requires a lot of thaumcrafting
- a technologically marvelous portal that requires a lot of engineering and power
The amount of time it takes to get back and forth, and the quantity of cargo that is transferred is dependent on the mode of transport.
Perhaps to first start, you have to pay a villager for passage on a ship to another realm by donkey caravan and it takes a full 60 seconds and you get 9 inventory slots per donkey you pay for, but eventually you have a fleet of inter-realm transportation vehicles to facilitate automated logistics at huge scales.
Suggested realms
The things listed below are not exhaustive nor set in stone, but intended to give a feel for how this might work.
Note: For the "minerals" I think that there should be a comprehensive gating/progression system involving the relative availability and rarity of different veins in the different realms, but I would need to think a lot about specifically how that would look and so I am not taking that into account below. For instance, perhaps Redstone can only be found (outside of small ores) in the Arid Realm, so you have to make your first sailboat to progress past that point. And perhaps you can get coal in any realm, but it is much more common/richer/bigger in a specific realm. Just something to keep in mind.
Frost Realm
anything cold
- Flora: bushes (dead, berry), orchids,
- Mobs: wolves, rabbits, deer, seals
- Minerals: ice, quartz, emeralds, coal, oil
- Structures: Snow villages, igloos, ice spikes, ice ravines, trading posts, frozen shiptwrecks
Other unique ideas:
- Unique fish
- Touching water hurts (too cold)
- can't farm here (too cold)
- solar is ineffective here
Grassland Realm
anything flat and grassy. a lot of rivers and ponds would be here
this could remain the "Overworld" if we need to do that for technical reasons.
- Flora: tall grass, sunflowers, many flowers, wheat, oak trees (sparse), bushes
- Mobs: horses, cows, sheep, rabbits, wolves, bees
- Minerals: clay (at rivers)
- Structures: many villages, castles, dungeons, abandoned mine shafts, etc compared to other realms
Arid Realm
deserts, wastelands, etc. anything hot and/or dry, but not cold - also volcano
- Flora: cacti, succulents, shrubs, acacia trees, desert flowers
- Mobs: rabbits, camels, vultures, spiders, skeletons
- Minerals: oil, sandstone, terracotta, SAND, gold, copper, salt, fossils
- Structures: pyramids, temples, wells, abandoned mines, trading outposts, oases, dried rivers, rock arches, canyons, waterfalls, river canyons
Other unique ideas:
- can't farm here? (too hot)
- solar is more effective here
Highland Realm
anything mountainous and/or volcanic
- Flora: pine, alpine flowers, sparse grass, mossy cobble, root vegetables, tea
- Mobs: goats, bears, wolves, rock elementals, dwarves (?), trolls, spiders
- Minerals: many ores with big veins, exclusive for things like tin and granite
- Structures: abandoned mineshafts, caves, bridges, volcanoes
Wetland Realm
This would be swamps, jungles, etc.
- Flora: lily pads, vines, mushrooms, flowers, moss
- Mobs: chickens (believe it or not they came from jungles), slimes, unique fish, WITCHES
- Minerals: clay, mud, peat, copper
- Structures: witch huts, sunken ruins, fishing villages, waterlogged ruins, obelisks
Other unique ideas:
- quicksand
- floating slime islands are here exclusively?
- bio-luminescence?
Forest Realm
Lots of trees and magic
- Flora: many trees, mushrooms, flowers, vines and moss, ferns, undergrowth
- Mobs: wolves, bears, deer, rabbits, spiders
- Minerals: amber
- Structures: logging companies/villages/outposts
Maritime Realm
- Flora: seaweed, mangroves
- Mobs: fishies, drowned
- Minerals: sand, salt water, salt,
- Structures: boats, fishing villages, small islands, underwater ravines, underwater shipwrecks
Other unique ideas:
- Perhaps this is the "nexus" between the other realms? portals spawn naturally that can facilitate transfer from ocean biomes in each realm, to the maritime realm? This could be the first way that it is possible to get from one Realm to another; a long boat ride.
Problems
- How does the nether and twilight forest portal work if there is no Overworld? Potentially the default spawn (maybe Grassland Realm) is actually the Overworld?
- How do you balance around inventory size for inter-realm logistics when the player can carry 72 miner backpacks of ore, or 72 MV fluid tanks?
- The early game is perfect and how dare someone suggest otherwise?
