[Discussion] Starting Town & Prebuilt Worlds

[CollinHerber]

Something that I've taken an interest in is prebuilt worlds that we can use for "Town" locations.
These are the areas that you will be able to visit to get/turn in quests. They can also be used for shopping, enhancing gear, etc.

A few ideas come to mind on how we can "get" to these locations.
The fastest and easiest way I can think of is a simple menu that allows you to select towns to travel to.

Something more advanced could be a "Waypoint" system. Perhaps you discover towns throughout your playthrough somehow and when you visit them you unlock their waypoints which allow you to travel to them using a waypoint?
The first waypoint could be obtained through some means or found and then able to be picked up?

I found an old map https://www.nexusmods.com/terraria/mods/28 that looks pretty cool that we may be able to get ideas from

Some developer documentation and resources

Including a world in the mod

https://github.com/ProjectStarlight/StarlightRiver/tree/master/Worlds

Creating a copy of the world

https://github.com/ProjectStarlight/StarlightRiver/blob/eebcfb0d6d0ab2e223850863f8ba15c706b4ccf9/Core/Systems/BossRushSystem/BossRushSystem.cs#L68

[benj7126]

The question of, "do we just never let the player obtain an axe and pickaxe?", comes to mid.

A few ideas come to mind on how we can "get" to these locations.

And i like the idea of a crap ton of custom maps, where we connect villages with maps, so as to say; to get to the next village you go to the edge of the screen and then a menu pops up with the whole map and ~3 of the villages shining, when you press one of the shining village you are sent to one side of a map you need to traverse to get to the village you selected.
(though this dosen't seem very terraria... would just be making an openworld arpg at this point, lol)

We could make all bosses summon at specific places on the world too, so you wouldn't have to create an arena and fight where you are (so there might be an arena, there might not... depends on the boss and place), using the quest system to guide the player, collect 1 of xxx drop -> offer xxx drop at the alter in the cave between city y and city z, something along those lines.

There's also the option of allowing random traversal from cities where you just join a random map and events can occur, maby you can run into a mini boss and then unlock the location where that mini boss spawns, and cities would have to either be encountered randomly or marked on the map by npcs.

[CollinHerber]

The question of, "do we just never let the player obtain an axe and pickaxe?", comes to mid.

I think a core part of terraria is mining, crafting , and exploring and I don't want to take that away from the game so I intend on letting the player do that through the normal means. Dig down, find biomes, collect shit, make gear, etc.

My initial thought was the main world is the "Wilderness". This world would contain the normal terraria things, such as being able to dig, chop, collect resources, etc. It could even be manipulated through events that happen through quests or what have you but I definitely think the main world should exist and be editable. This can essentially be their base of operations.

If we want connecting wilderness, such as dangerous space between 2 town we can have that as a subworld.

[benj7126]

I could see the fun in the idea of making the places between towns be editable by the player, but what will the player craft? Do we intend to keep all normal things(armor/weapons) in the game? i had the impression that that wasn't the plan...

[CollinHerber]

Yea I intended on removing the normal gear drops. That said I don't see why we can't have the gear that drops also be craftable. IE if someone wants to craft a rare Steel Sword for example they should be able to do that, and it would roll the item accordingly.

We could have "Item Modification" items be craftable as well. Such as a chaos orb (equivalents) that rerolls the item, or any other modification items.

[GabeHasWon]

A lot of the value of Terraria's randomly generated worlds is a much-elongated feeling of freshness. Prebuilt areas have their purpose, but usually as sprinkles of carefully thought out structures in an otherwise chaotic and natural world.
As such, I'd suggest something like the "Wilderness" and the interim between Wilderness & a town is completely or majority randomly generated. Same goes for some setpieces like a starting town - making simple, decent looking buildings adapt to land and such is pretty easy and does a lot for making the first few minutes of a game feel fresh.
This would also make variety way easier to make - instead of 3 preset build options, we could tilt the gen right or make it vertical or whatever.

As for potentially stopping the player from digging/changing the environment, I feel like - with the exception of towns or other structured, civilized areas - playing into that would be way more interesting than avoiding it altogether. Take a path to a town that requires you to blow up large, otherwise unbreakable rocks, or a claustrophobic area where mining blindly leads you to various things in a diegetic manner.

[CollinHerber]

Would towns be a "Biome" then and passes of the biome would be each of the buildings? Or how would that work?

[GabeHasWon]

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. "Biome"s are entirely Player constructs, aside from the Underground Desert, Ocean, Space/Sky and Underworld biomes no biome has a predetermined area. Biomes are arbitrary, they just usually ask for a specific amount of tiles in an area.

[CollinHerber]

I'm just trying to understand how I should split up the tickets. Like if I want a "Blacksmith Building" to appear randomly in the "Town Biomes" what would I create and how would I structure it for the Github issue. I am COMPLETELY naive on this worldgen stuff and how you envision this working based on your previous comments

[GabeHasWon]

You'd either make that a unique, prebuilt structure that is then randomly slotted into a random town generation thing or randomly generate a base shape and fill it with blacksmith's stuff. Either way, you could just say something like:

Blacksmith Town Room

Create a blacksmith's room in <\wherever these are generated>. This should fit the existing room format for <the place>, and contain <whatever tiles or NPC(s) are in there>.

[CollinHerber]

You'd either make that a unique, prebuilt structure that is then randomly slotted into a random town generation thing or randomly generate a base shape and fill it with blacksmith's stuff. Either way, you could just say something like:

Blacksmith Town Room

Create a blacksmith's room in <\wherever these are generated>. This should fit the existing room format for , and contain <whatever tiles or NPC(s) are in there>.

Something like this?
#169

[GabeHasWon]

You'd probably want a superior issue something along the lines of

Starting Town Generation

Starting Towns appear at the world's spawn area and are populated by a set of specific rooms and NPCs. These include #169, #x, #y, and would rely on pre-existing town generation made in #z.

Otherwise, this kinda assumes a Town system that is not yet made or fully ideated.

[CollinHerber]

So originally I was intending on the starting world to actually be the "Wilderness" area. Since this is the world that the player will be spending the majority of the time and also where they will be doing their building and such.

The intention was to have the towns as subworlds and you would "Travel" to them - Unlocking waypoints or town portal scrolls/items to get back to the towns you want to get back to. I like to idea of the waypoint system as it's a bit easier to manage than a bunch of item...

That is why I mentioned that the towns would not be able to be dug around/in since you would do those things on your "main" world or what I've been calling the "Wilderness"

Does that make sense to you? Do you think it should be done some other way?

[GabeHasWon]

Oh, that makes sense, sure. If we want, we could blacklist mining/placing stuff in towns pretty easily, and otherwise that'd be a pretty fun system for players to be in and work with.
Same with towns being subworlds, keeps the main world open and allows for players to be free when they want to to do whatever, and go into town when desired.

[benj7126]

The intention was to have the towns as subworlds and you would "Travel" to them

Were we still on team map with cities connected by "Wilderness" or how do you traverse between towns?

[CollinHerber]

I have not quite worked out how players will discover towns but the intention of traveling to towns is through a waypoint system - You would create your waypoint in your wilderness building area. That is the idea anyway - Open to suggestions

[GabeHasWon]

since you'd be teleporting from the Wilderness to a Wilderness between you and the town you transported to

The way I interpreted your message, the player necessarily teleports from the main Wilderness to a sub-Wilderness in order to go to a town.

The maps are like poe maps one-time dungeons, ig they could contain towns but thats has never been the intention

Got it, makes more sense - I'd still rename them to like, "Dungeon Crystal" or somesuch to clarify.

"effectively have a waypoint teleportation interface", so you just have to visit once and you could never enter that wilderness again if you want

Oh, didn't get this. I have no complaints then. Most of my complaints cascade from my assumption that it made interim Wildernesses required for travel.

I dont.

The rest of your reply makes this clear, and the clarification is much more useful than this.

[benj7126]

The way I interpreted your message, the player necessarily teleports from the main Wilderness to a sub-Wilderness in order to go to a town.

Oh... well fair, yeah i was thinking that we dont have a "main world" and you instead pick one of the wilderness as the spot you want to have a house in and mainly use.

This maby be problematic with the wall of flesh if we dont end up setting the sizes of the wildernesses to be long enough (was thinking that we would juts set the size of the wilderness between towns and let the normal world gen do its thing) to kill it; but maby we could just have a quest that sends you to a subworld that is just an arena for the wall of flesh or something.

was thinking that we would juts set the size of the wilderness between towns and let the normal world gen do its thing

Speaking off, idk how the world gen actually works, but would it be possible to have it be aware of the fact that, fx, the dungeon has already been generated in one "wilderness", or maby force the dungeon to only generate in the "wilderness" between two spicific towns that you encounter pretty early in the game..?
(i ask this having no clue if you know, lol)

I'd still rename them to like, "Dungeon Crystal"

Well, i dont care what they are called, so @CollinHerber, yay or nay?

[GabeHasWon]

Oh... well fair, yeah i was thinking that we dont have a "main world" and you instead pick one of the wilderness as the spot you want to have a house in and mainly use.

This is actually a really fun idea. Nice.

but maby we could just have a quest that sends you to a subworld that is just an arena for the wall of flesh or something.

This would be easiest, yeah. An arena or predetermined Underworld area.

Speaking off, idk how the world gen actually works, but would it be possible to have it be aware of the fact that, fx, the dungeon has already been generated in one "wilderness", or maby force the dungeon to only generate in the "wilderness" between two spicific towns that you encounter pretty early in the game..?

Yes, this is easy.

[benj7126]

This is actually a really fun idea. Nice.

Ok, neat, i think so too (though that was probably obvious); ig im just bad at explaining then sadge

[GabeHasWon]

That's normal, don't worry about it. We get better at communicating ideas as we do more things and communicate more, it's fine.

[CollinHerber]

I thought there was issues with trying to make a subworld the main world. I don't know we could have the subworld be the main world without being weird issues. When I say main world I mean the one they are on the most.

[benj7126]

that sure sounds like it would be a problem...
remember where you read this?

[CollinHerber]

that sure sounds like it would be a problem... remember where you read this?

Scalar mentioned it

[benj7126]

he also mentioned that they had multiplayer issues and you found somewhere that that wasnt the case (any more) so his info might be outdated; but probably something to look into / experiment with, then.

[CollinHerber]

he also mentioned that they had multiplayer issues and you found somewhere that that wasnt the case (any more) so his info might be outdated; but probably something to look into / experiment with, then.

Naw the multiplayer issues were a new issue that popped up with the June release of tmodloader. This was quickly fixed by the dev however. This was not something that scalar mentioned.

I'm pretty sure you do require exiting to the main world before you can save and quit however.

[benj7126]

This was not something that scalar mentioned.

Well he did mention multiplayer here.

I'm pretty sure you do require exiting to the main world before you can save and quit however.

ig thats true, but i dont see why we couldn't modify it a little here and there to fit our needs - wasnt it possible to make a subworld not be temporary iirc there was a variable for that; maby that lets you exit..? (gotta love the copium - no dice)

[CollinHerber]

It's worth exploring. I definitely like the idea no doubt. Just don't want to commit to something that let's us down because of a plugin. But I'm all for exploring the idea.

[GabeHasWon]

wasnt it possible to make a subworld not be temporary iirc there was a variable for that

Yeah, you can save and load individual subworlds.

I'm pretty sure you do require exiting to the main world before you can save and quit however.

I'm pretty sure there's options to do that, return to menu immediately, or be unable to exit the subworld entirely through the menu. I haven't checked, it's been a bit since I checked out Subworld Library.

I thought there was issues with trying to make a subworld the main world. I don't know we could have the subworld be the main world without being weird issues. When I say main world I mean the one they are on the most.

I don't know of any issue here. The only thing that comes to mind is putting the player in the last subworld they were in, assuming my statement above is accurate, but that shouldn't be bad. Otherwise, it requires some minor boilerplate last I checked, but Scalar might know more than I do.
At worst, it should be something we can work with.

[benj7126]

I'm pretty sure there's options to do that, return to menu immediately

public override int ReturnDestination => int.MinValue;
returns the player to the main menu on exit; still enters/starts in the main world though

he only thing that comes to mind is putting the player in the last subworld they were in

sounds solid, you know if we can do this instead of entering the main world? - so that we dont have to load what would then be an effectively useless world file (avoiding generating it could also be neat)
(intuitively it sounds possible, but there might be problems with loading some first-time / load once variables or something... idk)

[GabeHasWon]

I think worst case scenario, we let the player join the default world, then frame 1 load their last subworld. A little awkward, but would be fine for a one-time load thing - players likely wouldn't mind.

However, with an IL edit, we may be able to move them directly to the subworld. I think load-once variables would still be initialized properly as the main or any other world would still need to be loaded, but I'd have to look at the guts of Sublib to confirm.