The control scheme is about as intuitive as it can be in 3D space, just takes some learning. The gameplay requires intense spatial reasoning which I think is fine. Even if some people are better than others at it, that's just how it goes, much like how not everyone has the aptitude to be a l33t FPS 360 no-scope sniper with impeccable reflexes. As far as gameplay is concerned, you can't go wrong.
However, Snake 3D suffers from problems present in other mods like advtrains and digtron, where the camera rotation will be lost while attached to a moving entity. Add to this the way it moves in discrete increments and the attached segments of the snake is jarring and the net result is it is just not good for people like myself who are prone to motion sickness. Others have also pointed out how limiting the camera to within the rectangular prism of gameplay is unhelpful.
Conclusion: Play it if you don't get motion sick easily, avoid otherwise.
It took me a while to understand what was happening but I came to grips with it eventually. It's technically impressive and I enjoyed exploring it. It doens't look like its ready for you to create your own adventure, but the one included is enjoyable for sure. It seems it might also be possible to softlock yourself out of going back to certain rooms due to the 2-portal-max limit; I think I did this with some of them.
Lack of sound was a bit dissapointing, could have easily re-used Minetest Game sounds and yes some quiet peaceful music or ambience might have helped. SFX for entering newly discovered rooms would push it into a real exploration experience.
The portal barrier states need a bit of a further explanation and even though I think I finished the game by making it to the mine, I'm only guessing. Red = invalid configuration; blue = more than 2 portals in this configuration; pink = sides completed so far are valid, but the portal is incomplete.
I'd love to see an easy way for you to build your own puzzle worlds in it as well. Using the portals at the top and bottom might also be an interesting addition.
It's worth playing for the experience of figuring it out and progressing through the game, but I hope the author continues to improve it because it was a bit hard to start and there's no included documentation in-game or in the game files.
This game clearly needs a lot more love and development to succeed. It could be a fun game where you try to get a high score in rounds of increasing difficulty, or even a competitive multiplayer game, much like Frank Costanza vs the other guy fighting over the last doll in the store (Seinfeld :)
The arena should only be spawned once. You can mark it as spawned in a persistent mod storage and check upon world load if it needs to be done.
Same goes for the special presents, they should only be spawned once. Currently the best speedrun strategy is to quickly reload the game half a dozen times so that the presents are super easy to find.
Please write better git commit messages. Learning git is a long process but it will serve you well.
Choose better nodes for the walls, floor, ceiling and lights. Copper was definitely a poor choice. Since you're allowed texture re-use in the game jam, you could have used just about anything.
Let the player only carry one present at a time, and spawn more presents as they are returned to the score point.
A success sound jingle (get one from freesound) each time you capture. Doesn't matter if it's corny, it's much better than not having one.
Eventually try to have original mobs as well. In the mean time, you could at least increase the mob difficulty according to score.
That's about the minimum I would recommend to make this game fun. Persevere and have fun.
From the moment I launched it this game had my CPU running flat out on one core for no apparent reason. We'll get to the bottom of that and other technical problem issues. For now, gameplay: It told me presents were in a few different aisles but there are no signs on the aisles to tell me what number they are. Actually, it turns out this is the z-coordinate of each present. Also, I didn't have damage turned on when I started it, so I was actually cheating without knowing it. Games can override this if they know what they're doing.
So you eventually find at least one present, congrats, it wasn't on the shelves like the others and it was green. At least it doesn't matter if you have colourblindness when the special presents are in a different spot. You run back, place it down, easy enough. Then it tells me I can leave. Leave how? and do what? There's no door, the wall is impenetrable and the world outside is flat and featureless.
At this point you begin to ask what's original in the assets here. Mobs - from an old mod by PilzAdam. Walls - copper blocks from minetest game. For some reason all of MTG default was included. Shelves - from infinite IKEA. I guess the present texture is original? The git history is a mess and there's no licence file in the game's (1) original mod.
Now why does it 100% my CPU? All of the code runs in a globalstep and while the author, mercifully, added most things in a conditional in that globalstep, the entire warehouse of copper blocks, shelves and presents is replaced every single globalstep. Look, clearly the author is new to coding and probably overlooked or didn't fully understand this, but I just find this inexcusable.
I was missing the soundtrack when I first launched it due to having Minetest muted. Woops! It's a bit less boring with the soundtrack going, although at a grand total runtime of 73 seconds it will wear thin pretty quick. I thought it must be a professional/semi-amateur track originally composed elsewhere, but a look at the licence file and OGG metadata will reveal it's an original composition by ExeVirus in REAPER. I have to say the soundtrack does build the mood, but a good soundtrack doens't automatically make it a good game.
It's also the same schematic map with the same spawn point every time, and I really don't think the map layout made any real sense, it's more of a race track than a sensible road layout.
I didn't quite get why bicycle mod was chosen as a vehicle base instead of driftcar. I had some actual fun playing driftgame and one thing I think this game should aspire to become in the future is more like that, with procedurally generated streets. Other elements can be incorporated later as well, but good driving is always what one expects in a 'grand theft' type game.
I can see this project going some place like a drive-by shooting PvP game in a randomly generated arena and ending up being pretty fun. But for now I would hold off from playing it except if you want to do a few laps in the box while listening to the epic soundtrack, and then quit.
I don't know what your plans are for the game but here's some of my ideas mostly for more variety.
A variety of wall, floor and ceiling texture varieties to break monotony.
More than just corridors. Prisoner cells, guards' breakrooms, gymnasiums.
Curated singleplayer campaign with human-designed levels and some kind of plot involving a goal like breaking a prisoner out of maximum security in another wing and then escaping, or maybe defeating the big bad superintendent.
Guns maybe? I certainly get some Wolfenstein/Doom vibes walking around all these corridors.
Finally something that feels like its own game with SFX, MSX and custom texturing & HUD. It gets a little repetitive with the same grey brick walls and music, but it's worth exploring several times. The bugs that it does suffer are bearable and there are no huge UX blunders either. I see a great future for it if the author improves it.
The music and a slick looking UI will get you going and ready to play. When you land into the world, you may find it pretty monotonous pretty quick. However, since some of the other reviews I read revealed things I hadn't seen, and I myself discovered more on successive playthroughs/attempts, there's variety out there, it's just a bit sparse at first. I don't know what to say about the inconsistency of props and guards that I found throughout the jail, whether it's good or bad. Finishing your game can be a little anticlimactic and I didn't realise the air in front of me was indeed my escape.
There are two stats to manage: Health and sprint. There is a variety of food, beverages, enemies and weapons to be found. Play it multiple times to discover more. Be aware some enemies are plain-clothed.
The bugs have to be acknowledged: Health sometimes won't show, there are randomly dark areas, dynamite blowing up the light, you can cheese it by digging the walls (why are they diggable??), guards that deliberately try to avoid eye contact and pretend they don't see you or who like to stare at the wall for long periods.
The inability to save a game in progress is a little frustrating. The main menu should only show if no level is in progress.
Conclusion: Play it blind for the joy of discovery, bear with the monotony and bugs for a little bit. If not, be hopeful that the author will improve the game later enough for you to enjoy it.
Room for improvement: The minimap should be enabled by default, corridors should not be 2 nodes wide, because the pills end up on one side and not the other. The game should detect when a level is finished. The ghost AI needs to be much, much better and eating ghosts needs to work (punch or collide, I don't care).
Recommedations: Since the game has high walls, the minimap should be toggled on by default; that way you can see what pills have been eaten. I wish the ghosts would also show there, but that's not possible in Minetest (yet?). Also a way to make teleporting sections in the level editor.
Pac-Man itself is a good basis however Arcade3D fails to be fun, intuitive or automate the right parts. It's derivative to the point of probably being copyright infringing (I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice), but it's not worth the rightsholders of Pac-Man suing over. It's also not the first Pac-Man game for Minetest.
However, with a bit of a clean-up, the game could be good. Work has clearly been put into the visual art, I chuckled at the player model in a good way and the use of spheres for pills seems sensible, including not having too many polygons.
The idea of making your own arena is defeated when you realise the game has no way to spawn ghosts and pills for you. A good level editing experience is possible within the Minetest engine, so I exhort the developer to make better tools, which would be marking spots for the ghosts and pills to spawn, being able to start/stop a game intuitively, and of course not leaving the player inside the arena wall when placed.
Pacmine, part of myArcade, has the game starting feature down pat: right-click a starter node. The pink gates in Arcade3D make no sense, something myArcade handles better by having you right-click a node to start a game. However, Pacmine also suffers the issue of poor pill collision detection with server lag, so having the pills as nodes is better for that. Some comparisons to Pacmine wouldn't be helpful; Arcade3D being its own game is fine.
Conclusion: The promise of being able to make your own arenas is enticing, but as-is the game fails to deliver a good Pac-Man clone or level editing experience.
I wanted to enjoy some good movement mechanics and a well-guided experience. Instead I landed on the floor and had no idea how to get back up. There was no mention that it has to be done through a command, not on the ContentDB page, not in the game's root directory README ; instead I just granted myself fly and flew up to the start point again.
The lack of inclusion of a sprint mod lets it down; I don't see why it wasn't included, it's an important part of other block game parkours, and there is no issue with server lag if it's just as singleplayer game. I won't blame this game's developer for the changes to bouncy blocks, where they used to be much more fun but were changed to limit the jump height somewhere in the Minetest 5.x series.
The fact that some of the diggable blocks drop themselves and others don't was arbitrary and shouldn't have been done, especially when they look the same.
Lack of sound also lets the game down. With footstep sounds and a sprint sound it could have been better. Including (toggleable) music could have also help and wouldn't have broken competition rules to include minetest_game footstep sounds and a Creative Commons music track as far as I know.
Overall: A known-good idea for a game, but not implemented well enough as it is to recommend.
This mod is really useful for taking pictures of a small scene like a few nodes in a specific arrangement, an advtrains train or a mob. Just enclose it in a green screen (or one of several other colours) and take a screenshot of it. Then in your favourite editor e.g. GIMP, select that colour and turn it into transparency. Instantly isolated! Note: For best results isolating, disable anti-aliasing,
First let me say this is a well-put-together modpack. Highlights include:
Containers come with locked variants
Good variety of areas of in the house & home
Balanced crafting recipes
Dynamic features like animations, basic interactivity where appropriate
However, homedecor doesn't gel with me, and maybe it won't with you. I'm not intimately familiar with the modpack's history, but it seems to aggregate several mods or parts of other mods, like cottages roofing. This does result in a 'kitchen sink'*, but it's alright as you you're downloading a modpack and can disable bits that don't suit you.
Many models have some combination of curves, noticeable polygon count, and higher resolution texture that doesn't fit into a 16px block type aesthetic. I find that which items have had a high-polygon treatment and which haven't seems a bit random, and each mod has some of these spread through the pack. If all the models had more polygons, the whole thing would be cohesive and the net effect would be better. I'm particularly confused why the couches from lrfurn had curves added that actually seem to make the whole thing look worse. If all models were consistently block or highpoly it would be better.
I think the '3D extras' mod should be a config option.
Homedecor locks you into the Basic Materials system for crafting. Sure, there have to be concessions to add intermediate crafting materials and so that available recipes aren't exhausted. The problems caused might be better explained in a review on Basic Materials. Suffice to say if your server has a forked technic or other mods that haven't commited to Basic Materials it can create minor problems. Given the size of this modpack, nobody wants to be making their own set of dozens and dozens of crafting recipes.
In conclusion, only play with homedecor if you're willing to sacrifice visual consistency to get a large collection of stuff. Otherwise, use a few different decor mods for similar effect.
The control scheme is about as intuitive as it can be in 3D space, just takes some learning. The gameplay requires intense spatial reasoning which I think is fine. Even if some people are better than others at it, that's just how it goes, much like how not everyone has the aptitude to be a l33t FPS 360 no-scope sniper with impeccable reflexes. As far as gameplay is concerned, you can't go wrong.
However, Snake 3D suffers from problems present in other mods like advtrains and digtron, where the camera rotation will be lost while attached to a moving entity. Add to this the way it moves in discrete increments and the attached segments of the snake is jarring and the net result is it is just not good for people like myself who are prone to motion sickness. Others have also pointed out how limiting the camera to within the rectangular prism of gameplay is unhelpful.
Conclusion: Play it if you don't get motion sick easily, avoid otherwise.
It took me a while to understand what was happening but I came to grips with it eventually. It's technically impressive and I enjoyed exploring it. It doens't look like its ready for you to create your own adventure, but the one included is enjoyable for sure. It seems it might also be possible to softlock yourself out of going back to certain rooms due to the 2-portal-max limit; I think I did this with some of them.
Lack of sound was a bit dissapointing, could have easily re-used Minetest Game sounds and yes some quiet peaceful music or ambience might have helped. SFX for entering newly discovered rooms would push it into a real exploration experience.
The portal barrier states need a bit of a further explanation and even though I think I finished the game by making it to the mine, I'm only guessing. Red = invalid configuration; blue = more than 2 portals in this configuration; pink = sides completed so far are valid, but the portal is incomplete.
I'd love to see an easy way for you to build your own puzzle worlds in it as well. Using the portals at the top and bottom might also be an interesting addition.
It's worth playing for the experience of figuring it out and progressing through the game, but I hope the author continues to improve it because it was a bit hard to start and there's no included documentation in-game or in the game files.
This game clearly needs a lot more love and development to succeed. It could be a fun game where you try to get a high score in rounds of increasing difficulty, or even a competitive multiplayer game, much like Frank Costanza vs the other guy fighting over the last doll in the store (Seinfeld :)
That's about the minimum I would recommend to make this game fun. Persevere and have fun.
From the moment I launched it this game had my CPU running flat out on one core for no apparent reason. We'll get to the bottom of that and other technical problem issues. For now, gameplay: It told me presents were in a few different aisles but there are no signs on the aisles to tell me what number they are. Actually, it turns out this is the z-coordinate of each present. Also, I didn't have damage turned on when I started it, so I was actually cheating without knowing it. Games can override this if they know what they're doing.
So you eventually find at least one present, congrats, it wasn't on the shelves like the others and it was green. At least it doesn't matter if you have colourblindness when the special presents are in a different spot. You run back, place it down, easy enough. Then it tells me I can leave. Leave how? and do what? There's no door, the wall is impenetrable and the world outside is flat and featureless.
At this point you begin to ask what's original in the assets here. Mobs - from an old mod by PilzAdam. Walls - copper blocks from minetest game. For some reason all of MTG default was included. Shelves - from infinite IKEA. I guess the present texture is original? The git history is a mess and there's no licence file in the game's (1) original mod.
Now why does it 100% my CPU? All of the code runs in a globalstep and while the author, mercifully, added most things in a conditional in that globalstep, the entire warehouse of copper blocks, shelves and presents is replaced every single globalstep. Look, clearly the author is new to coding and probably overlooked or didn't fully understand this, but I just find this inexcusable.
Comments: Improvements
I was missing the soundtrack when I first launched it due to having Minetest muted. Woops! It's a bit less boring with the soundtrack going, although at a grand total runtime of 73 seconds it will wear thin pretty quick. I thought it must be a professional/semi-amateur track originally composed elsewhere, but a look at the licence file and OGG metadata will reveal it's an original composition by ExeVirus in REAPER. I have to say the soundtrack does build the mood, but a good soundtrack doens't automatically make it a good game.
It's also the same schematic map with the same spawn point every time, and I really don't think the map layout made any real sense, it's more of a race track than a sensible road layout.
I didn't quite get why bicycle mod was chosen as a vehicle base instead of driftcar. I had some actual fun playing driftgame and one thing I think this game should aspire to become in the future is more like that, with procedurally generated streets. Other elements can be incorporated later as well, but good driving is always what one expects in a 'grand theft' type game.
I can see this project going some place like a drive-by shooting PvP game in a randomly generated arena and ending up being pretty fun. But for now I would hold off from playing it except if you want to do a few laps in the box while listening to the epic soundtrack, and then quit.
Ideas thread
I don't know what your plans are for the game but here's some of my ideas mostly for more variety.
Finally something that feels like its own game with SFX, MSX and custom texturing & HUD. It gets a little repetitive with the same grey brick walls and music, but it's worth exploring several times. The bugs that it does suffer are bearable and there are no huge UX blunders either. I see a great future for it if the author improves it.
The music and a slick looking UI will get you going and ready to play. When you land into the world, you may find it pretty monotonous pretty quick. However, since some of the other reviews I read revealed things I hadn't seen, and I myself discovered more on successive playthroughs/attempts, there's variety out there, it's just a bit sparse at first. I don't know what to say about the inconsistency of props and guards that I found throughout the jail, whether it's good or bad. Finishing your game can be a little anticlimactic and I didn't realise the air in front of me was indeed my escape.
There are two stats to manage: Health and sprint. There is a variety of food, beverages, enemies and weapons to be found. Play it multiple times to discover more. Be aware some enemies are plain-clothed.
The bugs have to be acknowledged: Health sometimes won't show, there are randomly dark areas, dynamite blowing up the light, you can cheese it by digging the walls (why are they diggable??), guards that deliberately try to avoid eye contact and pretend they don't see you or who like to stare at the wall for long periods.
The inability to save a game in progress is a little frustrating. The main menu should only show if no level is in progress.
Conclusion: Play it blind for the joy of discovery, bear with the monotony and bugs for a little bit. If not, be hopeful that the author will improve the game later enough for you to enjoy it.
Comments: Ideas for improvement
I found most guards an even match to escape without sprinting, and the mega-guard fella I had to fight, couldn't run, because he was super fast.
Room for improvement: The minimap should be enabled by default, corridors should not be 2 nodes wide, because the pills end up on one side and not the other. The game should detect when a level is finished. The ghost AI needs to be much, much better and eating ghosts needs to work (punch or collide, I don't care).
Recommedations: Since the game has high walls, the minimap should be toggled on by default; that way you can see what pills have been eaten. I wish the ghosts would also show there, but that's not possible in Minetest (yet?). Also a way to make teleporting sections in the level editor.
Pac-Man itself is a good basis however Arcade3D fails to be fun, intuitive or automate the right parts. It's derivative to the point of probably being copyright infringing (I am not a lawyer; this is not legal advice), but it's not worth the rightsholders of Pac-Man suing over. It's also not the first Pac-Man game for Minetest.
However, with a bit of a clean-up, the game could be good. Work has clearly been put into the visual art, I chuckled at the player model in a good way and the use of spheres for pills seems sensible, including not having too many polygons.
The idea of making your own arena is defeated when you realise the game has no way to spawn ghosts and pills for you. A good level editing experience is possible within the Minetest engine, so I exhort the developer to make better tools, which would be marking spots for the ghosts and pills to spawn, being able to start/stop a game intuitively, and of course not leaving the player inside the arena wall when placed.
Pacmine, part of myArcade, has the game starting feature down pat: right-click a starter node. The pink gates in Arcade3D make no sense, something myArcade handles better by having you right-click a node to start a game. However, Pacmine also suffers the issue of poor pill collision detection with server lag, so having the pills as nodes is better for that. Some comparisons to Pacmine wouldn't be helpful; Arcade3D being its own game is fine.
Conclusion: The promise of being able to make your own arenas is enticing, but as-is the game fails to deliver a good Pac-Man clone or level editing experience.
Recommendations in comments...
I wanted to enjoy some good movement mechanics and a well-guided experience. Instead I landed on the floor and had no idea how to get back up. There was no mention that it has to be done through a command, not on the ContentDB page, not in the game's root directory README ; instead I just granted myself fly and flew up to the start point again.
The lack of inclusion of a sprint mod lets it down; I don't see why it wasn't included, it's an important part of other block game parkours, and there is no issue with server lag if it's just as singleplayer game. I won't blame this game's developer for the changes to bouncy blocks, where they used to be much more fun but were changed to limit the jump height somewhere in the Minetest 5.x series.
The fact that some of the diggable blocks drop themselves and others don't was arbitrary and shouldn't have been done, especially when they look the same.
Lack of sound also lets the game down. With footstep sounds and a sprint sound it could have been better. Including (toggleable) music could have also help and wouldn't have broken competition rules to include minetest_game footstep sounds and a Creative Commons music track as far as I know.
Overall: A known-good idea for a game, but not implemented well enough as it is to recommend.
This mod is really useful for taking pictures of a small scene like a few nodes in a specific arrangement, an advtrains train or a mob. Just enclose it in a green screen (or one of several other colours) and take a screenshot of it. Then in your favourite editor e.g. GIMP, select that colour and turn it into transparency. Instantly isolated! Note: For best results isolating, disable anti-aliasing,
First let me say this is a well-put-together modpack. Highlights include:
However, homedecor doesn't gel with me, and maybe it won't with you. I'm not intimately familiar with the modpack's history, but it seems to aggregate several mods or parts of other mods, like cottages roofing. This does result in a 'kitchen sink'*, but it's alright as you you're downloading a modpack and can disable bits that don't suit you.
Many models have some combination of curves, noticeable polygon count, and higher resolution texture that doesn't fit into a 16px block type aesthetic. I find that which items have had a high-polygon treatment and which haven't seems a bit random, and each mod has some of these spread through the pack. If all the models had more polygons, the whole thing would be cohesive and the net effect would be better. I'm particularly confused why the couches from lrfurn had curves added that actually seem to make the whole thing look worse. If all models were consistently block or highpoly it would be better.
I think the '3D extras' mod should be a config option.
Homedecor locks you into the Basic Materials system for crafting. Sure, there have to be concessions to add intermediate crafting materials and so that available recipes aren't exhausted. The problems caused might be better explained in a review on Basic Materials. Suffice to say if your server has a forked technic or other mods that haven't commited to Basic Materials it can create minor problems. Given the size of this modpack, nobody wants to be making their own set of dozens and dozens of crafting recipes.
In conclusion, only play with homedecor if you're willing to sacrifice visual consistency to get a large collection of stuff. Otherwise, use a few different decor mods for similar effect.