Archipelago Survival

With limited starting resources, build a sustainable lifestyle on sub-tropical islands, and risk the dangers of the caves for rare materials.

Back during the times of the Roman, Persian, and Egyptian Empires ocean travel was quite dangerous. However, there where those that took the risks of traveling out into the Pacific Ocean to find and settle the scattered islands and archipelagos.

The concept I am going for is the player being part of a group that has just landed on a new archipelago, and have to build their settlement. As you landed with few resources left, you need to find sources of food, build shelter, and plan for the long term survival of the tribe.

Since the cubic nature of MineCraft makes building easier, I have been trying to learn to do procedural generation of voxel terrain. However, I also know that being locked into a grid of squares is not to everyone's taste. So also considering ways that would allow more fluid building styles.

A set world size means there are limits both what can be done, and what is available. While some things will renew easily, others will be difficult to replace.

While the early focus is going to be on building, farming, fishing, and hunting, I do want to add some mystical elements and steampunk inspired technology.

 

Yeah, exactly.

 

Anchor Points with 22.5 degree rotation increments might be a good way to go for curves, but would increase the number of objects in the game if used heavily. Not to mention the headache of having chains of objects used for calculating the faces of the mesh.

 

You can do something like what the game Rust does. The places where you can build certain things like flooring and walls is grid-like despite nothing being a cube. Organic and easy to build with.

 

Would like some terrain manipulation and the ability to grow the building area, but could work with that easily, would make certain things easier such as creature spawning and resource nodes.

 

Interesting idea, I think you should how you are going to make it unique so that it isn't just like any other survival game out there.

I think the mystic/steampunk side is a good start.