Multiplayer, First person Sandbox Game for Building Worlds?

In a conversation I recently had with Xuis, he asked me what I would do with a 5x5x5 mile cube, if I could instantaneously design, build, and create anything in it. This tickled my imagination, and soon I started messing with paint sketches and dreaming of the crazy architecture and waterfalls and islands I could build. Think of it as a a simulator for Inception's Limbo, if you will.

So, my question: are there any games that get close to this? GMod has a lot of tools for building stuff, but is useless for landscapes and larger things. Minecraft is pretty close to what I'm dreaming of, but I would love for it to be realistic and beautiful, rather than giant blocks.

And if there isn't anything like this, why not?

So you want a multiplayer first-person real-time terrain building sandbox. Not aiming high at all, are you? :p

Not sure if Love would fill the hole you're looking for. Otherwise it seems you're after standard game engine tools, but multiplayerised. You could do this with UDK, but only locally - you'd have to cook and distribute the maps if you wanted to play it with people (and even then you'd only be able to run around in it, you wouldn't be able to edit the world). And you'd need a shedload of assets.

Funnily enough, if making games was as easy as you make it sound, everyone would be doing it

Floomi wrote:

So you want a multiplayer first-person real-time terrain building sandbox. Not aiming high at all, are you? :p

Also it should figure out what you are building and generate an orchestral soundtrack for it on the fly.

I have looked at Love, it might be the closest thing to what I'm imagining, but I wouldn't want random people mucking about with what I make, and I'd rather have realistic graphics, as much as I love Love's style.

The scope of this game might be beyond the tech of the day, which is too bad. I've always been tickled by the idea of creating worlds, like the guy who made Norway's Fjords in Hitchhiker's Guide.

Yeah, no, there's pretty much nothing like that. Except maybe Second Life.

edit: to clarify, there are some very approachable, elegant map editors out there. Far Cry 2's is particularly good, for example. But while you could build some impressive landscapes with existing tools, you'd ultimately be limited to having dudes run around them shooting each other in the face.

DF7 wrote:

So, my question: are there any games that get close to this? GMod has a lot of tools for building stuff, but is useless for landscapes and larger things. Minecraft is pretty close to what I'm dreaming of, but I would love for it to be realistic and beautiful, rather than giant blocks.

Those 2 are my first thoughts. I think the main problem with this and why it doesn't exist is the multiplayer aspect, shifting that much data around isn't easy, especially if you want it to high graphical quality. Do it singleplayer and you get stuff like the CryEngine editor.

The next suggestion would be id studio, which is the editing tools for idTech5 games, like Rage. Those tools are shipping with Rage, so you'll be able to play. The setup they have is able to take multiple people editing the same data set, and it's all in sync on a server. They haven't really gone into detail, so i might be off. The comparison Carmack gave was that many set painters can work on one set at a time, where as most game level editors it's one person at a time.

I've been contemplating and brainstorming what I would do with a vast underground space for several years now; here are some guidelines for what I've thought out.

The underground cube has an administrator, presumably you, who has complete control over the construction, partitioning, and overall modeling of the entire space.

Cube-Net is the network for the creating, destruction, and manipulation of the materials in the cube. You can also add in communication, scripts, and everything else you could use a regular computer for.

Material made by you using Cube-net is optionally formed from substance frozen in time. This makes it indestructible to force-based abuse and also keeps it perfectly situated in space in reference to the main terminal of Cube-net.

If Cube-net is used to construct or manipulate outside of the cube's boundaries, the precision is reduced by two factors:
1. The distance from the Cube-net main terminal
2. The speed of creation/manipulation (the slower, the more precise)

This isn't even going into all of the safety features, shared space restrictions/abilities, and moral dilemmas that have come up when discussing it with friends and strangers.
It's a thought provoking and entrancing idea, and I'm glad DF7 related to the conversation on this forum.

Another one, does Second Life count? It sounds like the sort of thing you're on about

As a disclaimer, I think Second Life is awful for a number of reasons.

That said, it does offer most of the functionality that you're looking for. Well, actually, what it does is offer a set of graphics primitives coupled with a freely-accessible multi-user environment. Well, unless you want to have a controlled space to display your designs, in which case you have to pay a subscription fee. Also, the CAD interface in SL is awful; you're better off building models in an external program and paying to import them.

I suggested Second Life, but he said no MMOs. I think he was more worried about all the yiffing.

Xuis wrote:

I've been contemplating and brainstorming what I would do with a vast underground space for several years now; here are some guidelines for what I've thought out.

The underground cube has an administrator, presumably you, who has complete control over the construction, partitioning, and overall modeling of the entire space.

Cube-Net is the network for the creating, destruction, and manipulation of the materials in the cube. You can also add in communication, scripts, and everything else you could use a regular computer for.

Material made by you using Cube-net is optionally formed from substance frozen in time. This makes it indestructible to force-based abuse and also keeps it perfectly situated in space in reference to the main terminal of Cube-net.

If Cube-net is used to construct or manipulate outside of the cube's boundaries, the precision is reduced by two factors:
1. The distance from the Cube-net main terminal
2. The speed of creation/manipulation (the slower, the more precise)

This isn't even going into all of the safety features, shared space restrictions/abilities, and moral dilemmas that have come up when discussing it with friends and strangers.
It's a thought provoking and entrancing idea, and I'm glad DF7 related to the conversation on this forum.

Wow, you've really got your mad ranting hobo spiel down pat. I'm impressed!

Floomi wrote:

Wow, you've really got your mad ranting hobo spiel down pat. I'm impressed!

Yep, all the passers-by respect my ingenuity to the highest standard as they flee from my refrigerator box fortress!

Multiplayer first person sandbox game for building words - sounds exactly like Minecraft or Eskil Steenberg's Love.

There's a 2D (non-first-person) version of something like this on Kongregate. I forget what it's called but everyone in the game has a little "avatar" and equal editing powers. It usually degenerates to one or two people trying to use the "propulsion" pieces to fling themselves in big loops, one or two people building walls in the paths of those loops, and everyone else either idling or trying to figure out what they're doing.

However, I think that a first-person world-building tool could be a great asset to all sorts of sandbox games. It would help you build giant penises from the perspective of the average person on the ground so you could make sure it looks appropriately phallic to the people for whom it was constructed. You could even utilize advanced architectural techniques to ensure that the girth appears constant throughout the length of the shaft.

LobsterMobster wrote:

You could even utilize advanced architectural techniques to ensure that the girth appears constant throughout the length of the shaft.

The Castle in Disneyland uses non-symmetrical lines in the tower to make it appear taller than it really is. They couldn't make it any larger than it is right now without having to put a big red flashing light on it to warn airplanes away.

carrotpanic wrote:

Multiplayer first person sandbox game for building words - sounds exactly like Minecraft or Eskil Steenberg's Love.

Minecraft is great fun. I highly suggest checking it out if you're looking for a "builder" type game.

I think MineCraft really is the closest thing that exists, it even has some amount of fluid dynamics in it for those waterfalls you were talking about. It is all in cubes, but people have still been able to use it to make some crazy cool stuff:

IMAGE(http://i42.tinypic.com/352llxu.jpg)

Though, I think what you really want to do is get into game development. That's where the real world-building is.

Yonder wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

You could even utilize advanced architectural techniques to ensure that the girth appears constant throughout the length of the shaft.

The Castle in Disneyland uses non-symmetrical lines in the tower to make it appear taller than it really is. They couldn't make it any larger than it is right now without having to put a big red flashing light on it to warn airplanes away.

There are also techniques to convince the mind that a structure is longer in a dimension that it actually is, parallel line in the dimension. For example a long wide building with horizontal features will seem wider, a tower with vertical features will appear taller. Go and do a image search on 'tower' and 'palace' and take a look at the buildings it turns up.

http://cubeengine.com/
http://sauerbraten.org/

There actually is an open-source real-time first-person live-network-editable game engine out there. It's probably a bit more work than Minecraft (I haven't tried the editing tools) but it's been around for a while. It's more Quake-style, though, so I'm not sure it matches exactly what you're looking for.

Minecraft is pretty cool, and it does seem like it is the closest thing out there, without getting into actual level creation. Its a shame that it doesn't look any better, but it does have a pretty charming art style all the same. I encourage everyone to try it in a LAN situation, it is a great way to loose 3 hours, and you can play it on pretty much any hardware.

Isn't this kind of what the Lego MMO is going to be? I don't know if you can sculpt the landscape but the preview vids have shown people building structures, vehicles and the like.

Realtime Worlds reveals Project: MyWorld. Interesting. Not sure if it will allow terrain-editing, but it is definitely something I'll keep my eye on.

I know it might sound gay and its not multiplayer but rollercoaster tycoon 3 lets you do some pretty cool stuff in the sandbox mode. I just downloaded RTC1 coz i was bored and remember how much time used to disappear when i was playing it but then downloaded RTC3 and was quite impressed. But it is theme park building. Thats how i stumbled across this thread coz i want something newer/cooler/better coz i luv construction sandbox games. I want one where i can build mad as bases on alien planets and have humans move in and you have to keep them alive. Man, sometimes I wish inception was real!!!

That does sound happy!

Oh man, another one for the thread? Party.

Wow. Not only did you necro a 15 month old thread with an off topic post, but you managed to throw in some homophobia as well! [color=green]What an excellent first post![/color]

Garden Ninja wrote:

Wow. Not only did you necro a 15 month old thread with an off topic post, but you managed to throw in some homophobia as well! [color=green]What an excellent first post![/color]

Hey don't be too hard on the new guy. When I first posted here I think it was something about Runescape.

I got better.

Tamren wrote:

Hey don't be too hard on the new guy. When I first posted here I think it was something about Runescape

Did you use "coz" and vary your capitalization on "I" several times throughout the post about Runescape?

If raszagal survives this, their eventual tagging thread is going to be a good one.

Elycion wrote:
Tamren wrote:

Hey don't be too hard on the new guy. When I first posted here I think it was something about Runescape

Did you use "coz" and vary your capitalization on "I" several times throughout the post about Runescape? :lol:

And season it with a dash of piracy?

LouZiffer wrote:

If raszagal survives this, their eventual tagging thread is going to be a good one.

My vote will be "Mr. Gay Zombie Conductor"

or Gay Homophobe