Modding Competition: Oceans

[Brian Gaucher]

Hi, I will be hosting a modding contest. There is a 10$ prize. The mods must relate to the ocean.

Prize
A 10$ USD will be given to the winner (winner will be contacted separetely). Second and third will receive honorable mention. In the case the first place winner chooses to decline, the prize will be given to second place.

Requirement
Your mod must be related to the ocean. Especially enriching survival. It can be biomes, mobs, plants, nodes, tools, etc. Your mod must have a forum and be hosted on Github, GitLab, etc. Zip-files do not qualify. WIP or incomplete mods may be submitted.

Judging
Mods must usable (if WIP, only complete features will be judged, others ignored). I myself will be judging. My artistic, non-tech friend will probably help judge for easthetics. More people may be chosen. (Moderators interrested in helping PM)
Judging includes: Code quality, performance, easthetics (if applicable), stability, novelty, features, personal enjoyment.

Timeline
At least one month. Currently target: Mid-April. Target is flexible.

+ FAQ

Q: I already made a mod related to the ocean. Can I submit it?
A: Of course. But why not try to improve it too.

Q: My mod [would] relate to rivers. Does that count?
A: If it relates to both, fine. But it must relate to the ocean.

Q: I don't have any ideas.
A: Try making some underwater mobs, fish, mammals. More plants, corals, seaweed, ruins, underwater structures, boats, subs. Underwater construction nodes, diving equipment, fish farming, biomes, etc. See Facedeer's ideas

[Brian Gaucher]

List of submissions. I'll add a link to all submissions in this post.

[Brian Gaucher]

Example application

Name

Brief description (try to stay below 200 words)

Screenshot (in a spoiler, if applicable)

Link to forum post

Link to GitHub, GitLab, etc.

[sofar]

Could you explain "why" you are doing this?

[Hume2]

It is already mid-March. Does that mean that we are all too late?

[Kroukuk]

Sounds like a cool idea! I'm looking forward to seeing some entries c:

[texmex]

This sounds fun! I really don’t care for the ”why” since it’ll be an open source contribution to the ecosystem. The fact that a deadline is set is a good motivator, but the current timeframe is just too narrow.

[runs]

yes, the motive is important.

why?

PS: Old mods vs new brand mods (one month time limit) in the same competition???

[Brian Gaucher]

It is already mid-March. Does that mean that we are all too late?

This sounds fun! I really don’t care for the ”why” since it’ll be an open source contribution to the ecosystem. The fact that a deadline is set is a good motivator, but the current timeframe is just too narrow.

My bad, for some reason I thought the next month was March, but it's April. It now says mid-April. One month seems good, I might extend it to the end of April.

[Brian Gaucher]

Could you explain "why" you are doing this?

I won 10$ online, and I don't really need anything right now. My friend and I found that oceans were quite stale, and there aren't many mods that modify it, other than airtanks, some fish, the new kelp and coral and some boats. Also, Minetest 5.0.0 just came out, which adds the plant_like_rooted drawtype, and new apis for mobs and entities.

So I wanted to encourage a collaborative and competitive effort to bring life to Minetest's oceans.

[Brian Gaucher]

yes, the motive is important.

I knew that without a motivator, this competition would get mostly ignored. Especially since I'm not a moderator or active developper.

PS: Old mods vs new brand mods (one month time limit) in the same competition???

Do you think it would be best if I didn't allow old mods? I was thinking that if someone already created an ocean related mod I should allow it (hopefully they try to improve it though). Plus there aren't many ocean related mods to start with, so there still plenty of space to innovate.

Newer mods do have a 'novelty' advantage when it come to judging.

[Sokomine]

This thread might also be a collection of mods that modify the ocean. There's the sea modpack - which is still very nice. Together with some fish, my ships_on_mapgen mod, further plants (they're always welcome) and some underground structures (not so simple mobs or a mod related to that spawns underwater temples), the ocean could become very decorative and intresting.

Wasn't there a mod somewhere to dig old, half-broken vases/amphores from the ocean floor? That could be an incentive to search the ocean floor.

[FaceDeer]

I'm all for anything that results in the less-developed regions of Minetest's world getting fleshed out with more detail. :) I'll provisionally submit my old Airtanks mod to this contest, but I'm also going to start brainstorming and hopefully come up with something new to submit instead.

[texmex]

Holy Mese! Things just got real as Facedeer joins in.

[DrFrankenstone]

I'm also going to start brainstorming

There are zero "ocean" or "sea" ideas in the "mod requests/ideas" thread, "underwater" appears a few times, but it does seem that oceans are rather overlooked.

[FaceDeer]

Here's my current crop of ideas, in case one of these inspires someone to take a stab at it or sparks further details. Ideas are cheap so everyone feel free to steal them. :)

The main idea I've been poking at right now is some sort of deep-ocean hydrothermal vent biome. A while back I was messing around with v7 mapgen's noise settings and managed to make some nice deep, dark ocean depths, but of course the only thing down there was stone and water. It'd be nice to have "oases" of strange life, black smokers, giant clams, and so forth. Throw in a little bioluminescence and you've got an interesting place to visit. I've already done a bit of this kind of thing in the "Sunless Sea" cavern layer of dfcaverns, there might be some code worth borrowing from that.

I was also thinking a mapgen mod to spawn sunken ships, but that would require building nice-looking sunken ship schematics. That'll be a big challenge given how anything other than a regular node box produces not-so-nice-looking visible water faces. Maybe some more fantasy-oriented underwater ruins would be better, you could spawn remnants of the Deep One civilization or even outposts of lost Rl'yeh. Static structures can be done more easily with cubes than boats can.

Moving on from mapgen mod ideas, I just spent the last couple of days working on a mod for drainage pipes, perhaps some tools along similar lines intended to help with underwater construction would be handy? Whenever I try to build a structure on the bottom of the ocean the biggest pain is draining the water out of it, perhaps some kind of "suck this room dry" tool. There's probably inspiration to be had in the "mars survive" and "vacuum" mods, those have code in them for determining whether a particular node is inside a "sealed" room. Something like their air-generators that pushes water out of the room.

I made a "pontoons" mod a while back that had some basic blocks intended to help build floating structures more easily, perhaps expand on that with some nodes intended for building docks or seasteading platforms? Unfortunately I'm not coming up with any specific ideas here - most everything you'd want to build with can already be found in existing mods.

[Brian Gaucher]

I have seen some ideas relating to underwater. If those ideas can be used for exploring the ocean, it works. My original idea was to have an underwater mod competition. But I found that oceans would evoke more creative ideas.

[Brian Gaucher]

For some inspiration. There was an older mod, which used old APIs, and was quite buggy, but someone might like to take inspiration from it and try making a new one. [Modpack] Sea. The author told me « But feel free to use whatever part you can use for the competition. »

[texmex]

It’d be nice to see ocean mods which not only adds new decorations but structures with purpose, tools, ores and gear that adds to and alters gameplay.

I assume the target game is MTG?

[Brian Gaucher]

I assume the target game is MTG?

Yes, mods submitted should be compatible with MTG. Ideally they should be compatible with any (reasonable) game. They may have dependencies. If the mod is targetting another game, I will test it with that game, but it is less likely to be chosen as the winner.

[markthesmeagol]

As requested, I am submitting my only mod:

TIDES

This is a really simple mod that changes the tide when you aren't looking. It still has a lot to be done to it, such as wrecking ships, moving boats, and being in sync with the moon, but the tide does go up and down.

Since it only happens when you aren't looking, there aren't any dramatic screenshots, but I will try to find some low-tide pictures soonish (when I have some free time).

link to post:https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=21600
link to repo:https://github.com/smeagolthellama/tides