Dynamic Difficulty Mod

[RaustBlackDragon]

Okay, seeing how Minecraft has no dynamic difficulty, and the game only gets easier as you get better equipment, I thought I should make a mod to remedy this situation: one that adds dynamic difficulty.

Basically, the deeper you get and the further out from the spawn you get, the stronger the enemies become, the better stuff they drop, etc.

Also, if you get really far out, daytime hostiles start showing up, and eventually you start fighting monsters that actually give your obscenely overpowered weapons and armor (which normally made you an unstoppable god) an actual challenge.

For the most part, it'll be just powered up versions of your standard minecraft mooks, but I also hope to add some truly nasty mod-unique monsters.

Anybody have any particularly dark, sadistic ideas for a dangerous mob?

[M!C]

Ever thought of adding dragons? ;)

[Stormweaver]

Tbh, I've always mentally thought of minecraft as being like diablo. On that note, all monsters should be pallette swaps of what we already have, with the occasional shiny version wanting to eat your face in the bad way.

...I wouldn't mind seeing a diablo mod actually.

[DaveYanakov]

The Weeping Angels mod adds an incredibly dangerous and scary mob to the game in the form of statues immune to swords that move and knock down your torches when you aren't watching them.

[RaustBlackDragon]

The Weeping Angels mod adds an incredibly dangerous and scary mob to the game in the form of statues immune to swords that move and knock down your torches when you aren't watching them.

yes, but the idea is to make the game actually get harder as you "progress".

[Speltz]

Just throwing it out there... Damien from the Omen?

While it may not be worthwhile to stay with the movie completely, you could make a pretty cool boss mob around his character, in my opinion.

For instance, maybe he could have a base or something in an empty NPC village, with a couple of his 'minions', for lack of a better word, protecting him, like the nurse or the black dog. And if you come within a certain distance (but out of sight) of the village, he begins targeting you to keep you away, more often the closer you get (although you can never get far enough away to escape him completely). That way, once you stumble into his area of control, you'll be hunted until you find the village and fight you way to him and take him down.
For the sort of 'mind control' thing that happens occasionally in the movie, maybe he could randomly remap your movement controls for two minutes or something, to leave you scrambling to find them again (especially if there are other enemies around). And he could summon a large pack of angry wolves/dogs in your general area that come straight for you. Dunno how the 'random' accidents could be recreated, maybe something with lightning strikes or supporting blocks for gravel/sand disappearing?

Anyways, that's the gist of it, and I have no idea whether or not it's even possible to do, or if more people think it would be as cool as I do.

[DaveYanakov]

Seems the post I made earlier got eaten...

Basically, the deeper you get and the further out from the spawn you get, the stronger the enemies become, the better stuff they drop, etc.

Also, if you get really far out, daytime hostiles start showing up, and eventually you start fighting monsters that actually give your obscenely overpowered weapons and armor (which normally made you an unstoppable god) an actual challenge.

For the most part, it'll be just powered up versions of your standard minecraft mooks, but I also hope to add some truly nasty mod-unique monsters.

Anybody have any particularly dark, sadistic ideas for a dangerous mob?

If you can pull this off, why not make it so certain mobs will not show up until you get a certain distance from spawn? Or only have a chance to spawn when you use an iron or diamond tool? Or are wearing iron armor...

[RaustBlackDragon]

Seems the post I made earlier got eaten...

Basically, the deeper you get and the further out from the spawn you get, the stronger the enemies become, the better stuff they drop, etc.

Also, if you get really far out, daytime hostiles start showing up, and eventually you start fighting monsters that actually give your obscenely overpowered weapons and armor (which normally made you an unstoppable god) an actual challenge.

For the most part, it'll be just powered up versions of your standard minecraft mooks, but I also hope to add some truly nasty mod-unique monsters.

Anybody have any particularly dark, sadistic ideas for a dangerous mob?

If you can pull this off, why not make it so certain mobs will not show up until you get a certain distance from spawn? Or only have a chance to spawn when you use an iron or diamond tool? Or are wearing iron armor...

That's trivially easy. I just need to make sure their x y and z coordinates (y would be multiplied though) add up to a certain minimum value before they can spawn. I'm asking more about any ideas for really diabolical mobs to add, in the same spirit as the creeper.

[jorgebonafe]

I don't think this progression by distance is such a good idea. I mean, usually people choose a place to make a base and start to build up from there. It would be interesting to find a different way to calculate the progression..

For example, since building is the very base of minecraft gameplay, it would be interesting to make maybe a counter that gets incremented for every block you place and with different values for each block type. That way, as your base grows, the monsters get stronger and such. And building a base of golden block walls would pretty much make things a lot harder then make them out of cobble.

[RaustBlackDragon]

I don't think this progression by distance is such a good idea. I mean, usually people choose a place to make a base and start to build up from there. It would be interesting to find a different way to calculate the progression..

For example, since building is the very base of minecraft gameplay, it would be interesting to make maybe a counter that gets incremented for every block you place and with different values for each block type. That way, as your base grows, the monsters get stronger and such. And building a base of golden block walls would pretty much make things a lot harder then make them out of cobble.

Interesting...

[FlowerChild]

I don't think this progression by distance is such a good idea. I mean, usually people choose a place to make a base and start to build up from there. It would be interesting to find a different way to calculate the progression..

Personally, I think the distance thing is far more intuitive and would allow the player to basically set his own difficulty as he decides to move further and further into unexplored territory. It also opens the door to stuff like base attacking/destroying mobs and such, which would kinda suck if the system were based on building materials as your starter bases would start getting rolled soon as you passed an arbitrary build-threshold. With it being based on distance however, if properly built your bases would always stay safe in the region in which they're created.

I like this idea btw. I think it's a nice simple approach to the problem, and a problem I've been considering myself since I've been tossing around the idea of adding some mobs to BTW.

[Zhil]

Can I suggest one small change? Make it distance to stronghold instead of distance to spawn.

The place you start is actually not that important, it's the place you're going now that there's an end goal.

[DaveYanakov]

The only problem (other than what Jorge already mentioned) I can see with determining difficulty by grid position like that is that sometimes you can spawn upwards of half a kilometer from 0,64,0

[Zhil]

The only problem (other than what Jorge already mentioned) I can see with determining difficulty by grid position like that is that sometimes you can spawn upwards of half a kilometer from 0,64,0

Hence why I suggest making it depend on the stronghold location. 0,64,0 is usually a very unimportant non-distinctive point.

[Mintdragon]

I like this idea a lot. Maybe you could add bigger versions of mobs? (Giant creeper, giant Skelly, etc.) I like that the more stuff you collect and where you go has an impact as well. An idea you may want to consider is the generation of "Random stuff". For example, I love the Herobrine Mod. http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/511 ... r-a-while/ One of the things He does is build and set traps in your world. He can also make you have "nightmares", which place you in a separate "reality" in the same world.

[Ethazeriel]

Yeah, I'm liking this idea. It seems like a decent method to have the variety/amount of hostile mobs increase as the player travels farther, but I can see how this could be an issue for people who like to explore before choosing a place to build a house. therefore, I suggest this:

the "home point" is not decided in reference to the players' spawn point, but is set when a player places a certain amount of blocks in close proximity to one another. sure, the system has its flaws, but it seems this would allow players to travel for a while and find a decent home spot, and then once they start actually building their home this would set the epicenter of difficulty.

[Thyphon]

Perhaps making time a factor aswell. Before you start your world, you select wether you want: easy time (for new players), normal time (for experienced players) and hard time (for very experienced players).

By this i mean time before the Dynamic Difficulty sets ind, so that you dont get slaughtered because you start in a bad spot. But also add a Hardcore time aka No time before the Dynamic Difficulty sets ind.

or the longer you play the harder it gets?

Also a mob suggestion: sflow (wolfs backwords), this mob can't be tamed by the player, but will follow hostile mobs and help them kill you, the true terror of these would be that work properly and (unlike the wolfs) dont try to kill its owner.

[FlowerChild]

Can I suggest one small change? Make it distance to stronghold instead of distance to spawn.

The place you start is actually not that important, it's the place you're going now that there's an end goal.

My understanding was that there's an infinite number of Stongholds in the game. I can't see this working. Plus, your compass always points to initial spawn. It would at least give it some meaning.

If you're going to create this mod, my advice would be to keep it simple. Again, I like the idea, don't let it get diluted.

[pi4t]

My understanding was that there's an infinite number of Stongholds in the game.

Nope, only three will spawn in any given world. It's one of my main gripes with the adventure update.

[FlowerChild]

Nope, only three will spawn in any given world. It's one of my main gripes with the adventure update.

I'm pretty sure I saw a tweet at some point saying that would change to infinite.

EDIT: Can't find it. If anyone remembers where I may have seen that, please let me know, as I've been taking it as a given.

[pi4t]

I'm pretty sure I saw a tweet at some point saying that would change to infinite.

Really? I can't see anything about that on the minecraft wiki.

As of Beta 1.9 Pre-release 2, Strongholds are still limited to 3 in a world.

Also interesting, though is that

In Beta 1.8, all Strongholds are located at random in an annulus between 640 and 1152 blocks from the origin, 0/0. ... The three strongholds are spawned at equal angles from the center point of the world (that is, each stronghold is 120 degrees from the others, measured from the origin.)

[M!C]

Nope, only three will spawn in any given world. It's one of my main gripes with the adventure update.

I'm pretty sure I saw a tweet at some point saying that would change to infinite.

EDIT: Can't find it. If anyone remembers where I may have seen that, please let me know, as I've been taking it as a given.

Yep, I can confirm that ... that was before I started my thread here though so no link, sorry.

[FlowerChild]

Really? I can't see anything about that on the minecraft wiki.

Yeah, I can't find it anywhere either, but I was convinced this was the case for quite awhile now, and could have sworn I had read it directly from Mojang.

It was a big area of concern for me as one of the major problems with the 3-stronghold thing is that you're basically screwed if you are playing with an old world as you may have already explored and generated all the chunks that would have contained strongholds. It would seem very strange to me if they left it as is as a result, and would be a major downer for me since I've basically been playing with the same world since I started playing Minecraft.

[FlowerChild]

Yep, I can confirm that ... that was before I started my thread here though so no link, sorry.

Oh good :)

[RaustBlackDragon]

thanks for the input, guys!

Also, I'm thinking that the first tier would be a comparatively large radius, so that you have more spaces to choose from if you want to set up a base within tier 1.

I can also confirm that notch said it would be infinite. Either way, 3 is still more than 1, so the infinite-3 debate is utterly meaningless when it comes to the initial suggestion.

I'll be sure to try and keep it simple. I had some pretty exotic ideas rolling around, but yeah, simpler is better.

Also, the Sflow idea... not saying I'll do it, but I'm quite possibly one of the best modders you could have possibly pitched that suggestion to.

But it's too similar to my Enderwolves idea for Doggy talents.