Summary of Futurecraft

Futurecraft

Imagine:

You have had an interesting day in the mines. You had worked hard, and had helped to find a seam of iron. In amongst this iron, you found a strange new material, which you name crocite. A fellow miner had taken the crocite to the village counsel, and they shall decide what to do with it over the next few days.



These are the thoughts that are racing though your mind as you walk back to your house on the outskirts of Midendel, your home village. You have always admired your house, as it had been built on the ruins of a much older structure, built by people who lived, worked, and died in a similar fashion to how you and your people do today. The house was three storeys high, and had a separate bathroom, a rare luxury among miners. As you open the front gate, your pet wolf, Chomper, comes rushing to greet you. You give him some pork, the remains of your lunch, and go inside.



After dinner, you retire to your bed. After all your work today, you fall asleep quickly, only to find that you are tormented with horrible nightmares. Before you, the sky flashes red, and the great Forest of Kururka burns to ashes. All that is left of your village, your home, your life, is ash, floating through a thick grey cloud of dust. You awaken to the sound of an explosion, and you shoot bolt upright with a start. You think that it was just a remnant of your dream, but as you close your eyes, another explosion sounds. You notice this time that before the explosion, there was a bright flash of yellow light, which streamed in through your open window. You hear a scream far off in the distance, and then it stops suddenly. You believe yourself to still be dreaming, so you quickly pinch your arm to make sure you’re awake. No luck, this is real.



You panic. You know that you must get yourself out of here, but go where? As you run out of the house, grabbing your diamond sword and a torch on the way, the answer comes to you; to take shelter in the caverns. Your ancestors had discovered the cavers hundreds of years ago. They had become a place of refuge in times of need, like a few cycles back, when the valley had flooded and much of the forest, and the village were destroyed. As you run, many more flashes and explosions occur, then, as you are only a kilometre or so away from the caves, at the base of the mountain were they are, the noise stops. The night is eerily silent. No owls, no cicadas (which are common this time of year), no sign of sleeping animals; it appears that every creature had just vanished. Even the sound of a hissing creeper would have given you comfort, but alas, there was nothing.



As you stood, just waiting, waiting for a sign, waiting for a sound, you noticed a low, droning hum. It hadn’t been there before, of that you were sure, and you find yourself wondering what it is. Whatever it is, it is certainly getting closer, and you can now feel the vibrations on your skull. The noise continues to get louder, until it reaches a point in which the trees threaten to uproot themselves because they are shaking so much. It is at this all dominating level of sound that the humming stops. You look around you, suddenly afraid now that the humming had been silenced. You see nothing around you as you wave your torch from side to side, but then you look up...



Above you, a thing of incredible size, awe inspiring in the full meaning of the word, is a creature, covered in strange grey materials. You see lights shining brightly down on the forest around you, and you here animals scatter around you as they try to avoid its gaze. At least you can draw comfort from the fact that all the animals hadn’t disappeared. As one of lights adjusts it position, and tilts towards you, you follow the lead of the animals, and run. True terror seizes you body as you see your shadow below you, illuminated by a light that seemed to tear through your body, and peer straight into your soul. You turn to face the source of the light, and hold your sword up in defiance of this strange creature that fills the sky.



A ball of fire erupts from the creature, and you think perhaps that it is dying. You feel a slight ting of compassion for it, than you remember an elder telling you about ghasts, that shoot fire balls like this, and you realise that the creature is trying to kill you. As the ball hits the tress and explodes, the shockwave flattening the trees ear it, you realise this is the sound you heard before. The shockwave hits you, and the light fades, as does the world around you, turning to grey, and you realise that you’re dying. Dying, as you had been thrown back into a fallen log, and you could tell that your bones were broken, your skin torn, your life fading, quickly. It would be over soon, over soon.





I hope you liked my story, I wrote it as an example of what this mod should be able to achieve, and certainly what I want it to achieve. What Steve in the story saw as giant creatures were in fact spaceships, which had come to collect the “crocite” as it is useful for their technology.



Now, welcome to Futurecraft...


The Team

The Programmers: Shiva, GroundBurg_Coder13, Kronath, and Dr. Mackeroth
The Texturer: Dr. Mackeroth
The Testers: Wasp2100 and his servers.
The P.R.O.: Shiva
The Mixers: (several candidates!)

MineCrack is doing something useful code-wise, but I have no idea the extent to which he is actually helping.


Anyway, to business:
Greetings to all you Earthlings out there! We have thought up an idea for a mod which, if executed properly, will possibly be the greatest (but hopefully not the hardest [too late, it is]) mod ever. If it is successful enough Notch might even add the main idea (the interserver travel, and the possibility of trade and war) of this mod to Minecraft.
By know you are (hopefully) wondering what could possibly be so good, and not falling asleep or closing the page. So I shall tell you:
This mod has three main (more like 10) parts to it:

Inter-server travel

Firstly, this mod will add a way to travel between servers, while still keeping your inventory. It would also allow other entities (including spaceships) to travel, allowing for trade, alliances, colonies, and wars. I thought one day, long past, that if you can keep your skin and player ID between different locations, why not your inventory?

A passionate speech by the Doctor:


Those who say that this is a bad idea are wrong. I believe in what Notch said “that the future of Minecraft is in multiplayer”, and what better way to do this than to be able to have better communication between worlds? This way we can work together to build a better world, a world that we can share, and if so desired, a world that we can conquer. This important part of the idea isn't the inventory being able to be taken between worlds but entities. What inspired me to write this was the thought of flying through a wormhole, appearing on an unsuspecting world with a massive fleet in tow and levelling their cities, buildings and towns to the ground? (Things like the ability to have wars would be configurable to avoid people quitting servers and flaming at the makers of this mod. They can't blame us if they know that war could happen at any time.)

Spaceships

secondly are spaceships. Not just little fighters that zip around and fire lasers, but massive assault ships that carry ground forces, cargo ships that freight goods, cruise ships that act as general vessels, and of course mother ships: massive huge, making weird science-fiction noises. Only the smallest two vessels, the escape pod and fighter can be crafted (though with difficulty), and the other ships will have to be built using blocks, and then turned from blocks to a controllable entity by using a (craft-able) spaceship core. The cores differ depending on what craft you wish to make, with cores for larger ships being harder to make, and there being one type of core for each vessel. Placing a core would cause all connected blocks to become part of the spaceship, excluding several kinds of blocks; including dirt, sand, stone and other non-space things (these blocks can be carried on a ship if surrounded by other kinds of blocks ( leaving room for green spaces in vessels). The different kinds of cores each support a different range of blocks (in the number they can support). Once spaceships have a core in them, they can be controlled and flown ( by use of a craft-able control chair, while sitting on that chair, your view becomes 3rd person, of the whole ship, and your usual controls instead become the ships controls (with extra controls for new features of the ship). The different kinds of ships are as follows (there is a lot of information here):

Escape pod

Craft-able and can't fly on its own. When powered by Redstone, it will fly straight down and land on the ground (will avoid water and lava, as well as high cliffs). If it is jettisoned in space (explained later), it will fly to the nearest server and spawn at a random at the top of the world. They are only 1 by two blocks and have 20 vehicle health (explained later), and has no weapons.

Fighter


Craft-able (possibly using the plane crafting bench from Flan's mod), has two laser guns that disintegrate mobs and blocks (10 points of normal damage, 5 points of vehicle health, fires at about 3 shots a second). It uses 10 energy points per second, can be fuelled by Redstone, batteries, and oil. It can't travel through hyperspace, and only holds one person. 75 vehicle health.

Drop ship (landing craft)

a small ship that must first be built and then have a core installed a core to fly. It can support up to 10 points of turrets, no shield, (explained later) and can be up to 500 blocks big (as a box around the craft). When built, it must contain a tank or other vehicle (explained later). It moves slowly and is only designed for small recon missions and not for heavy duty fighting. 100 vehicle health points, 20 energy units per second, can be fuelled by everything except a ZPM.

Frigate

A light warship that is easy to make. It is a primary affordable fighting tool in any fleet, and is often carried on larger vessels until needed. 20 points for turrets, can support up to 100 shield health (like vehicle health, only replenishes over time), 200 vehicle health, fast sub-light speed, can support a light hyper drive. Takes all power types except ZPMs. 500-1 000 blocks 3.

Diplomatic ships

this ship can't be attacked (by other ships), but it can't support any turrets. It has 200 vehicle health points, no shields, and uses 15 energy points per second. It can take any form of energy besides a ZPM. It has a medium hyper drive and medium sub-light speed. 500-1 000 blocks 3.

Cargo ship

Cargo ships are long range transporters. Unlike other ships, they are built, and then connected to trailers, like a truck. The head of a cargo ship has 150 vehicle life, no shield, 6 turret points, and uses 30 energy points per second. The trailers each have 100 vehicle lives, 6 turret points, and use an additional 10 energy points per second. The ship has a slow sub-light speed and long warp. The head and each of the pods can be up to 1 000 blocks3.

Cruiser

Cruise ships are all round, general purpose war ships. They have 40 points for turrets, can support up to 200 shield points, 200 vehicle health, and use 30 energy points per second. Medium hyper drive and medium sub-light speed means that it is good for most missions. 2 500-10 000 blocks3.

Battle cruiser

A more powerful warship than the cruise ship (but much harder to make). 60 points for turrets, up to 300 shield and health points, 45 energy per second. Also with medium hyper drive and medium sub-light speed. 10 000-20 000 blocks3, one point for special weapon. This and all ships henceforth can support all fuel types, including the ZPM.

Dreadnought

this is a powerful ship that is designed for one purpose: to destroy every living thing on the planet it is attacking. There are two different kinds of these ships: dreadnought and super dreadnought.
The dreadnought has 200 points for turrets, 500 vehicle health and shield points. Slow sub-light and long warp (although it travels 30% slower than normal warp. It uses 60 energy points per second. 20 000-100 000 blocks3. 2 points for special weapons.
The super dreadnought is like a larger and more powerful version of the dreadnought. It has 400 points for turrets, 1000 health and shield points. It has super slow sub-light, and travels 40% slower than normal warp. Using 120 energy points per second, it’s a guzzler for power. 100 000-500 000 blocks3. It can support 5 points for special weapons.


Assault ship

these are long range, heavy war ships. In their immense cargo holds they carry whole battalions of troops, along with many smaller craft. 300 turret points, 1 250 life and shield points, and uses 150 power units per second. (That's a massive 2.5 Redstone torches every second). Medium sub-light, long warps engines. 5 00000-1 000 000 blocks3. 2 points for special weapons.

Easter egg ship

Obviously, I can't disclose much about this vessel, you will have to discover the recipes and features of this ship on your own. However, I will tell you what is required to make the core, but not the actual recipe, as otherwise it would be too hard. The recipe requires: Forget it, the one which I had was far too simple. Hint:

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Gizmos, gadgets and various doomsday devices

Ground-side:

* (Don't ask about the dot, I can't get rid of it) Stationary shield: a shield that place on the ground and it covers a large area in a bubble. The shield can be any size or shape; it depends on how many emitters you have, each emitter will provide shielding for 1000 blocks. It uses 20 energy units per second, per emitter.

Docking port: like a spaceship, it needs a core to work, but it can't move. It works as a hangar for smaller ships, and a docking port for larger ships. It needs a core so the facility can be destroyed as a whole, and also so it can have working cargo doors and others devices. Health is No. of blocks divided by 10. It has 200 shield health points. 40 energy per second.

Anti-air gun: craft-able, has inventory for fuel. Does 20 points of vehicle damage, as a rail-gun (rapid fire). 5 energy per shot.

Light space gun: good for small vessels, does 40 points of vehicle damage, as large laser burst (medium fire rate). 30 energy per shot.

Drone pad: preferred weapon of those with... class, certainly my favourite, these are copied straight from Stargate. Drones do 200 points of vehicle damage, goes through shields, will automatically target key areas of the ship, starting with weapons, then engines, control centres, power lines, thin areas of the ship, life support, etc. Best part is, you have to control them, with your keyboard, mouse and other devices (drones will be controlled as a swarm, you must direct them to the ship, and then will take over and find a key area to damage on approach). They can be fired as quickly as you want, so long as you have drones (which are very complicated to craft) to fire at them. Also, they can be individually fired, and you can control them completely using your keyboard, although you can only control 2 like this, using separate controls. 5 energy per drone, per second of air/space time.

Ion cannons. Enough said.
(Fine, if you must know: 500 vehicle health point damage, long reload, auto aiming). 200 energy per shot.

Wire-less controls: Great for controlling such thing as doors, shields, towers, bombs, and other things. Need to be linked to a control chair to work. Uses 5 energy units per command.

Radar tower: Self explanatory, they can track multiple ships. The radar dish is crafted, and needs to be connected to both a power source and a computer screen.

On ships:

Not telling, wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, now, would I...
Just a few things:
Powerful weapons, including different kinds of lasers, missiles and oversized rail guns apparently called MAC guns,

Shields, cloaks, and scanners,

much, much more.

In your hand:

Bleeping, whirring, new devices:

Life signs detector:

Lasers, phasers, and tazers:

Machine guns:

Remote control, but for what?



Phones, calculators (why not?)





Crafting essentials:

Silicon chips: made from sand and Redstone. Needs to be smelted after crafting. Used in more basic electronic components

Control crystal: made from Glow stone, Redstone and diamonds. Used in more advanced electronic components.

Alloys: to make these, you need a smelter (craft-able with 3 furnaces surrounded by iron). They go as follows:
- Trinium, made from iron, Naquadah, and titanium
- Steel, just smelt iron
- What else?


this is just a taste of what is to come, like the ships, you will have to discover most of by yourself! Good luck Minecraftians.

..."Plus a few miscellaneous, nick-knacks"

Consumable energy
this will mean that mechanical devices will use up energy. There are several ways to power devices:
- Redstone torches, they store 60 energy units
- Batteries, they store 500 energy units
- Vehicle batteries, they store 5000 energy units
- Generator, has to be next to a furnace to work, if the furnace is burning, the Generator will produce 10 units of energy per second
- Solar panels, needs to be outside, generates 10 units of energy per second, per block
- Nuclear reactor, generates 1000 energy units for every lump of uranium put into it
- Fuel rods made from uranium, put into reactor for 5,000 energy units each
- ZPM (Zero Point Module), draws energy directly from sub-space, 1,000,000,000 units of energy

All of the energy sources would need to be directly linked to the device(s) that they are powering by Redstone, except for the reactor and ZPM, which contain too much energy to be transferred by Redstone, and must instead be transmitted by a special mix of Redstone, diamond and iron piping.
For the fighter space ship (as you can't place any of these blocks in it, and it can't have a line of Redstone connecting to a power device), you must place batteries in its inventory (similar to a plane form the planes mod)

I was perusing (what a great word) the Industrial-Craft mod, and realised that how the energy in that mod worked is similar to how it could work in this one. We have permission to use their base code for energy.


Space, the final frontier
Space will be added in this mod, judging by the poll. If you read the replies to this thread, you will have a fairly good idea of what it is. To explain:
Space can only be accessed by spaceships (and possibly space elevators). To get there, you will need to be going very, very fast (obviously not at actual escape velocity, that would crash Minecraft. Once there, you need to be completely surrounded by blocks, otherwise it means that you are exposed to space, and will start losing health rapidly (like lava). At least in the early stages of the mod, we won't go into great detail about atmospheric pressure and consumable air, although this could be added later. Of course there would also be space suits, which will decrease in uses while in space, and increase in uses while in a pressurised environment.
The terrain generation is fairly simple, generate nothing. Nothing besides empty void, with visible stars, and perhaps occasionally asteroids (weather we should add these or not is being debated). To work out were each server is in the Minecraft "universe" we will use the map of the Internet, and the locations of each server (its IP address) on the picture will determine its actual location. Some scale or another will be used to calculate distance (and therefore travel time) between these servers. Resized to 19% (was 4000 x 4000) - Click image to enlargefile:///C:/Users/MyDell/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image006.jpg
for orbital views of planets, the idea is not yet resolved.

Robots


this idea will help people have large armies without many people. Robots would be craft-able, meaning that many could be mass produced. There are several kinds of robots:

Gigamettalix's ideas (completed by Doc):

- The sentry. Sentries float around guarding objects and sometimes even participate in battle; they have a cube for a body and a single laser eye that it uses to attack (2 normal damage, 1 vehicle damage, 5 healths, and 1 energy unit per 5 seconds).
- The sentinel. Sentinels have all sorts of upgrades that are equipped able, such as rapid fire, they also are bigger, faster and stronger than sentries, although they have a higher price tag. (Basic model has a 4/2 damage laser, 10 health and uses 1 energy per second)

My ideas:


- Battle robot: Same size and shape as a human (so it can use a modified version of the human skin). Fires lasers that do 5/2.5 points of damage. 15 lives, uses 2 energy per second (fuelled by batteries).
- Advanced battle robot: Similar to the normal battle robot, but with an 8 damage laser (4 vehicle damage) and 20 life points. 3 energy per second.
- Juggernaut: Twice the height of a person (looks quite different though), 15 damage laser (7.5 vehicle damage), 30 vehicle life, 5 energy per second.
All of these robots can be switched between sentry mode (if they stand on the spot, they will shoot any enemy that gets too close and only moves when attacked), and follow mode (where the follow you, or any person on the same sever as you, the creator of them). In follow mode, they will protect you automatically, similar to wolves.

Need a crew? (Ideas by Kronath, alternate suggestions by me [in not red])

* There has been some controversy over these ideas, perhaps a poll?
With the number of people normally on a server (5-15 in my experience), I think people would end up with either tiny fleets with a small crew in each ship or bigger fleets with almost crewless ships. To fix this each player would be able to captain a ship crewed by NPCs.
the Ranks:
Admiral / General - This is the server Admin. They are in charge of appointing Squadron Commanders (OPs) and get first choice when selecting a ship to command.
Squadron Commander - All Squadron Commanders are OPs, but not all OPs are Squadron Commanders. Their job is to appoint Captains and to command the fleet when the Admiral is not present. Squadron Commanders get to choose their ship after the Admiral has his/hers.
Captain - The ordinary players in the server that have been appointed by Squadron Commanders to Captain a ship. They do not get to choose their ship, but are given one by their Squadron Commander. I think that it would be wiser if the captains could choose their ship, but can only fly ships which they have licence for.
Lieutenant - Players that have not been given command of their own ship. They serve under a Captain until a Squadron Commander gives them a ship of their own.
Sergeant (maybe something else) - NPCs that crew each ship. Their real purpose is just to make the ships livelier instead of looking like a ghost town. Because of this the AI doesn't have to be very good, just wander around the ship (maybe a few could stay permanently on the bridge near control stations). They would have some behaviour, such as the ability to man turrets (and automatically target enemies) as this wouldn't be too hard to code...

Each rank can command the rank beneath it. For example, a Squadron Commander could order his squadron (a couple of Captains Ships) into a formation and then take control of the entire squadron, flying multiple ships as if they were one. Similarly, the Admiral could order the squadrons into formation and then fly the entire fleet as one ship. Formations would be more for flying around then for battle, as if they take out the head ship, the results would be... ugly at best. Also, this could be hard to code.

Other vehicles

- ATV: light ground vehicle. Fast, 50 vehicle health, single rapid laser gun. 5 EU per second. Fits 2 people (one as gunner, one as driver)
- Hover tank: craft-able (with difficulty), it is a slow but powerful land vehicle. 100 vehicle health. Have a large laser gun (as main weapon) and two rail guns. 7 EU per second. Fits 6 people
- Helicopter: craft-able (with difficulty). Manoeuvrable (responds quickly to commands), with medium speed. 75 vehicle health. Single rail gun.10 EU per second. Fits 2 people
- Jet: craft-able (with difficulty, possibly using plane crafting bench). Extremely fast (to avoid lag, it will display generic blur at high speeds). 100 vehicle health. 2 rapid laser guns, capable of carrying 4 missiles. 15 EU per second. Fits 4 people.


This is Futurecraft...