How will modding work? Isn’t it pretty hard to mod an online game without breaking the balance? Someone could just mod an op weapon/material in the game. couldn’t he? Please enlighten me 
I think we’re expecting substantial mods to run in parallel to the main game, like an alternate universe. Your character, but a different version of him where things are… different.
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Or perhaps, once time and money allow it, have a dedicated vanilla server and a modded-to-hell server.
Yes - this is the plan at a high level.
Oort Online = Oort Voxel Engine + Oort Server + Oort Tools (World Builder, etc) + collection of custom MMO features.
We’ll make the Oort Voxel Engine + Server + Tools are all suitable for independent modding and deployment.
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I made a post on the original forum of how I envisioned mods working well with vanilla on private worlds-
Picking up any custom blocks or items etc in a private world temporarily blocks all exit portals until you drop said items somewhere. If you change your race or your abilities, you have to change back before you can leave.
It might be nice if private servers sharing the same mods would allow portals between each other- essentially, each world blocks incompatible mod items from entering it.
That’s the basic idea for keeping mod-worlds and vanilla-worlds linked. Splitting up the universe is a little less clean a solution but however modding makes it in is fine by me.
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I like this idea very much
I’ve been thinking about it from a game rule perspective. We will have the following configurations:
- Public Oort Online MMO servers - the main game.
- Private Oort Online MMO servers - players who want to craft and control their own world.
- Public / Private Modded servers - players who want to play with different rules by modding and run their own servers.
We will naturally allow for players to use portals to step between #1 and #2. They’re playing with the same rules. The integrity of the game is safe.
But I imagine #3 will need to be disconnected from the main game. These servers will be able to pull data from OO (so you could play with your character from the MMO), but I doubt we’ll be able to allow them to push data back to OO.
In this setup the MMO is safe, secure, and everyone is playing by the same rules. Additionally, players can setup their own configurations and adapt the rules.
Thoughts?
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I am not quite sure about moving from #2 to #1 as you could practically just make a world consisting of diamond…
Modded worlds definitely need to be separated from the non-modded, I’m just wondering if it’s feasible to make the boundary seamless, with some transition back and forth that prevents cross-contamination. If not ordinary portals, perhaps something like a “bridge” world that takes on the role of a filter- keeping the modded worlds apart, yet still connected. You can still travel back and forth, but when returning to #1 you get stripped of your mods.
I guess what I’m thinking of is like a portal which acts like an airlock, or a border-check station.
Like with Thorbjorn’s problem- you can lock the added diamonds and anything made from them to their own world to preserve the game balance in vanilla worlds.
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Hmm so like when you enter a modded/private world it saves your character and when you leaves it loads the characters again so you haven’t been changed?
@Thorbjorn42gbf We wouldn’t allow private worlds to be created in a way that unbalances the economy of the game.
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Ah ok that makes sense 
Have you put any thoughts into how it would work exactly?
If there’s an mod that you devs really like will there be the possibility that you add it in the vanilla game? In my minecraft times I always wanted the devs to do so
Thoughts on community created content? i really love the idea of Trove where you had several different items and different looks, people could send in something they created (sadly only in an expensive third party tool) and if it got enough likes it would get into the game and the item model would have the creators name on it.
for @james i think allowing people to pull their chars to modded servers is kind of a bad idea, especially if you allow mods to basically change the entire game, i think they should just be seperated if possible so the modded servers had a character save data and the real servers had some too.
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But a world consisting of diamond would not be within the rules of the MMO. For completeness we should be more accurate then:
- Public Oort Online MMO servers - the main game.
- Private Oort Online servers:
- Connected MMO servers - players who want to craft and control their own world (within the rules of the MMO.)
- Independent servers - for worlds created beyond the rules of the MMO.
- Public / Private Modded servers - players who want to play with different rules by modding and run their own servers.
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Yes - we have thought about creating worlds within the rules of the MMO. One solution allows you to create a world where each resource block has a cost associated against it.
Say, coal = 1 and iron = 10, then you could have 100 coal blocks or 10 iron blocks (per chunk) because the total const is constant.
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This is definitely something we’re thinking about. There are some technical issues - but ultimately it’ll come down to player and mod maker interest.
We’re planning to share as much of our toolchain as possible - so that modders can uses everything we’re using to get new content into the game. If there is sufficient quality and player interested - sure - it would be cool to expand the game with community content.
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We wouldn’t enable anything that unbalanced either the MMO or an independent mod. But I don’t see what would be so bad about allowing players to share their character - which might just mean the customised visual look. So it would have no effect on gameplay. Think of it as sharing a skin.
But sharing other content might make sense: a players friends, lists of guilds, members of guilds, etc.
Thanks for clarification 