I’ve not seen how you’re going to handle monster spawning yet, but I’d like a way to protect an area that doesn’t involve having to illuminate every square inch of a space.
I’ve never been a giant fan of creepers because they can ruin my work, and there’s no way that you can actually keep them from appearing short of covering nearly everything with torches.
As we’re obviously going to have creatures that can destroy blocks, because that’s cool, if there’d be a way to keep them at bay I’d really appreciate it. (Maybe a single block that stops spawning within a certain distance. Maybe you’d even be able to craft blocks that allow certain monsters to spawn but not others.)
I think beacons should have an option that is something like “monster-b-gone” where you can keep certain monsters from coming close to your beacons. Maybe this could work with tokens? Like you can use a blank token on a monster to get a monster token, then put it in the beacon and the beacon will be like one of those sonic pet barrier things.
Certain monsters should spawn at certain times of day, maybe some monsters will “sleep” if they’re still spawned and the time changes.
I think weather would decrease the spawn rate of most monsters, as it doesn’t make much sense for animals to start running around MORE when it’s a thunderstorm. Maybe some specific monsters that are related to rain/wind/thunder will spawn more.
Maybe mini-beacon/torch things that you can put monster tokens in to make a portable safe area. You put the torch thing down, put some tokens in it, and then it will keep those monsters away.
Creatures should not spawn inside beacons by my opinion neither should they despawn.
Both hostile and passive creatures should spawn at all times though different mobs should have be restricted to spawning within set time of the day.
Also i think that it would be cool that where and when mosters spawn is tied to both biomes and the world itself in the world builder. Meaning that you could have worlds where mo pigs spawn at day and worlds where they spawn at night.
Just for the sake of custom private owned servers, mob spawning rules should be customizable in the WB. As a general rule though, mob spawn rules should be fairly consistent in the public universe. Ex, mo’pig always has same spawn conditions on all worlds they are present on, though they may not be present on all worlds. I’d like to see spawn rules that were logical for each creature type to make them feel unique and fleshed out. Ex, stalker types spawn in the dark, but chargers spawn in well lit places.
For myself, I would say PLEASE PLEASE no spawning of hostile mobs inside a beacon! I can’t tell u how many times I am happily working on a build and piggy sneaks up behind me and pounds me into the dirt. I can never equip the bow and get him fast enough before he takes his mohawk rage out on me LOL
And in areas outside of a beacon, maybe if the area is well lit enough, it will keep hostiles away?
Well, darkness in general, I suppose. Dark, full of terrors, all that.
Also, I didn’t mean stalkers spawn at night, but in dark places. Dark forests, caves, dark nights, all places that would benefit it’s stealthy hunting style.
First I want to say: Please please please don’t go for the Minecraft model that makes you place a torch every 5m because mob spawning is bound to the light level.
@alexanderyou s idea of beacons working like a sonic pet barrier in combination with tokens is really good.
The idea of weather effecting creatures also sounds amazing, it reminds me of the endermen in Minecraft that teleport around until they find a dry place when it is raining (this would especially be amazing with the awesome weather effects we are going to get). But I´m not a fan of the mini-beacon idea, this would just result into the same mess as it did with torches in Minecraft.
The idea of certain creatures only spawning in certain biomes is also quite good but this would require quite a big variety of creature types to work.
My own super over the top suggestion for creature spawning would be that, since there has to be some player tracing system for world regeneration anyway, there should be a similar system that tracks where player currently are and have been in the past minutes and only allows monster spawning in areas where no player is currently present/ no player was present in the past few minutes. This would prevent creatures spawning right into your face (like they do now) and would also guarantee that the way out of a cave is still relatively free when you decide to go out after battling your way in (something that also bothered me in Minecraft).
@james Havok said something quite great when we discussed this a weeks time ago, something along the lines of ‘‘Creatures should not spawn in beacons, neither should they be able to damage things in beacons, however they should be allowed to freely enter beacons, that way you can avoid creatures if you build a proper house and use doors, but if you fail and forget to take care you will be punished for it’’
So i would love to see it sorta logically, one thing that always bothered me was the whole wow style ‘‘you are halfway done with cleaning and area but no matter how many you kill they keep spawning in that area’’
Not sure if possible but i think the rule should be ''Animals cannot spawn if it is within a certain range of a player, that would allow getting killed by something which just spawned, however it also makes just standing in one area to farm kill impossible.
Creatures should have certain biomes they spawn in, so some creature only spawns in caves, some in forests, some in deserts, some in ice areas and some in grass areas, so you sorta know what creatures dwell where, for example the herbivore creature wont have any food in the desert, so it doesnt spawn there.
And lastly i think night should be ‘‘dangerous’’ and encourage people to stay in (if we make the day/night cycle a bit longer) it should not be a sort of ‘‘you cant be out at night’’ but rather ‘‘you better watch your step’’ to achieve that i would recommend a creature type called ‘‘Hunters’’ which only spawns at night, carnivorous animals who are stronger and more agressive than the monsters on the tiered world, if we say tier 1 creatures have 5 power and tier 2 have 10, then the hunters on tier one should have 7.5 power, so something you really dont want to mess with unless you know what you are doing.
Your hunter creature idea reminds a lot of the night infected in dying light
I also think that the day/night cycle should affect the gameplay more, maybe with some sort of increased risk vs increased reward system. (but this is a topic for another post)
Here is a unique idea for spawn conditions of flying types: Carrion birds. Killing any creature (outside, durring clear daytime weather) has a 10% chance to spawn a flyer circling above the recently killed creature. These birds are aggressive if you approach the corpse, and dive bomb reckless poachers.
Evolve in a nutshell. but yeah its a nice idea definitely, the problem i can see with that though is if you are out killing you generally take into account how much of a beating you can take, so imagine you finally kill a Rare/elite creature and a bird just spawns and insta kills you, the amount of rage would be unreal.
Evolve does this? Bummer, I wanted to do something not seen before.
As for the surprise attack getting you when you’re weak, that’s sorta the point Give them a shrieking sound when they dive bomb, players will quickly learn to fear the shrieker and adapt their play style.
Nah not precisely, it just spawns birds so you can see where the monster have eaten, only way to find the bloody thing, it really is a cool idea though, but this would also tie into how creatures die and loot, when you kill a creature does the corpse stay? in that case for how long? i wouldnt mind something like a creature that comes from the sky a minute after you have killed something and stays for something that would look like 10 mins, instaspawn would just be frustrating and that way you can have a little time to get your loot and get away.
Gotcha, well the spawn conditions would still work even if you added a 5 second delay in the spawn cycle (it could spiral down from above as if it was watching the whole time) then give a warning sound before attacking.
for me it shouldnt be on low tier world, but at tier 2 you might have 10% chance, tier 3 you have 20, etc etc… that way you know that everything you fight will cause a bird to attack you, this should also depend on where you are though
How about nests, dens, lairs for monsters? Primarily, world has spawned lairs of monsters in a proper areas. Lair can be set of blocks or sleeping monster-queen. Secondly server checking map of spreading ways for every lair. This map is determine a places, where monsters from lair can spawn.
You can find lair and ravage it. But if number of lairs is decreased, monsters turns into nesting mode and try to found new places for lairs, where players will not disturb they.
For example, yeti creatures only spawn in snow areas.
Proximity based spawning/hive blocks.
Creatures might only spawn near certain resources. I.E. Pigs might only spawn near places where truffle blocks are. Or maybe there’s a phoenix creature whose eggs are found near lava blocks before they hatch.
The creatures themselves might help propagate/destroy a block type. Perhaps bees would spawn near and then consume flowers in an area - but produce hive+honey blocks. (Hive blocks would also spawn bees)
Exclusionary blocks
Creatures might never spawn within a certain range of certain block types. Just like I suggested truffle blocks above, perhaps if you make an “anti-truffle” block it would stop pigs from spawning near by. And there might also be a universal repellent block.
At first thought, I feel like beacons should probably be safe areas.
They represent civilization to a certain point.
I think it would still be important to allow players a way to allow spawning in their beacon though.
It would be cool if there was a type of structure a player could craft within their beacon that would change properties of the beacon.
For example, create a small alter and place a truffle block on it - boom, you spawn a lot of pigs.
This could work for other beacon properties as well, like beacon color/visibility/etc.
Nocturnal and diurnal creatures would be excellent, but I don’t think it should change their ability to spawn merely the state they spawn in. (awake/sleeping)
Perhaps it’s safer to hunt gorillas at night, because you can find them asleep.
Certainly do this if able, but I understand how out of hand this could get. (Even if it’d be amazing)
Some creatures feel like outside creatures, and some creatures feel like they should be cave dwellers.
Examples:
Perhaps there are some cliff dwelling birds that look for large altitude changes and nest on the cliff face.
Water creatures that are found only in rivers/lakes/oceans. (They’ll only dwell in/near water of a certain size)
Trap door creatures. They wall off a section/mouth of a cave except for a small door and wait for the player to walk through in order to jump at them.
There might be creatures who only spawn during weather events.
“I hear that high up in the mountains, on only the darkest of nights when a great storm is brewing you can see a beast lumbering in the woods. It’s massive back illuminated be flashes of lightning, it’s voice as loud as the thunder!”
I think weather should also change the behavior of a lot of beasts. Perhaps they seek shelter beneath trees, perhaps they run away when thunder strikes, etc.
Oops, I’ve kinda been suggesting these along the way, but here goes a run down.
Blocks that control creature spawning, (i.e. truffle blocks) that the player can harvest in order to cut down on the spawn rate of creatures.
Blocks that restrict spawning within a certain area.
Altars that change the spawning characteristics of beacons.
Okay, there are a few ideas. Hopefully some of that is helpful or interesting.
I can never equip the bow and get him fast enough before he takes his mohawk rage out on me LOL
Give them a shrieking sound when they dive bomb, players will quickly learn to fear the shrieker and adapt their play style.