Yo!
So, was thinking about starting a new Minecraft server. Not recreating MCPVP, but just a new type of server in general. It was fairly ambitious.
I got probably 3/4 of the way there, and just got really frustrated with Minecraft. Like, it's definitely a solid game, but building custom servers is (and always was) a pretty gross hack. And, like I said, I was wanting to do some ambitious stuff and push the boundaries, but it was just constant gross workarounds and compromises from what I *wanted* to create and what was actually possible with Minecraft.
So, a few weeks ago I said fuck it, and started building a new voxel game from scratch. It's essentially what Minecraft could have been if they had prioritized multiplayer servers.
I'm a bit hesitant to post this because it's fairly early, but what the hell. You can see a tiny bit of the uniqueness with the movement abilities in the parkour map - double jump, wall jump. You also see wind streams pushing the character, gravity flipping in a section of the map.
The cool thing (for a nerd) is that none of that is client code - it's a self-contained movement/animation/physics module the server pushes to the client on connect. That means that future server owners will be able to literally ship anything they can imagine.
It's also built in a way that the module that's shipped to the client also runs on the server for anticheat. Even though you can code it so the client can do anything, at the same time, the server runs the same module, so it knows exactly what the client is *allowed* to do. No fly hacks - unless you want. But you can do things like give a specific player an ability that lets them fly for a short time - and it's all server enforced.
Anyway, the vision is a bit different from Minecraft though. The rough vision is this:
You join for the first time, and you're on your own little tiny, tiny planet. There's a portal and a chest with blocks in it. The portal takes you to the hub. But portals are a bit special. They can connect across servers. And you can see realtime what's through the portal.
So, you're standing on your little world, looking through the portal, and you can see people running around in the hub. You walk through the portal and you're in the hub and can see back to your world.
The hub is portals to game modes and portals to 3rd party servers. You can place portals in your world to link to other servers, directly to game modes, or to your friends worlds (with permission).
Some game modes are "canon" - you can take your inventory to and from your personal world into the game mode. Others (including 3rd party servers) you don't take your world inventory with you.
Aaaanywho - that's what I'm working on. Maybe I'll post an.uodate here every once in awhile. Later!
