Voxel Kingdoms is a Luanti (Formerly Minetest) game that I am currently developing.
Vision:
The exact gameplay will depend on who hosted the server, and the server could lean into or away from certain aspects of gameplay.
The game could be anything from a medieval fighting game, a cooperative open-world RPG/dungeon Crawler, a Tower Defense Game, or even a MOBA.
My vision for the main game is to make a team-pvp/gvg (guild vs guild) game combined with a town building/management game, with open world RPG elements. Many of the featurs described here are still being implemented and don’t fully exist yet in the game.
As I’m a single developer each part of the game will be added gradually however my plan is the create a game where the dominant entities are “Kingdoms” (More or less a guilds).
Kingdoms:
Each new player can apply for citizenship in a kingdom of their choice, if accepted they will start at the lowest rank as a peasant.
At different ranks players will have unique Duties and Privileges.
When you join a kingdom you will usually have access to their town and the surrounding farmland, as well as the protection of their army.
Based on the resources the kingdom acquires they will be able to spawn a certain amount of different NPCs ranging from farmers, builders, shopkeepers, soldiers, to fully-fledged multidimensional personalities.
NPCs and lower ranked players will pay large amount of tax on all income generated within the confines of the kingdom, and the higher ranks will use this money to fund their duties. For example, a lowest level peasant who’s a builder might have access to free cobble, wood, and glass (until the town runs out), and a farmer might have free access to fences, saplings, buckets, and related tools.
Whereas higher ranked players might have the tax of peasants and NPCs paid to them, but be responsible for paying a share of their income directly towards the king, these players will have the capacity to override the duties and privileges of other players as needed. Of course the roles of NPCs will be harder to customize but those of players can simply be defined as plaintext.
Creating a Kingdom
Any player who finds unclaimed land can start their own kingdom, immediately beginning at the top rank, however chances are you will quickly become a target for more powerful kingdoms, who will see the wealth concentrated in one area as an easy payday for their own kingdom, due to this it will be possible to create a vassal state, a kingdom which is autonomous, yet pays tax to a more powerful kingdom in exchange for maintaining an alliance.
Once you’ve reach the top ranks where you have great amounts of wealth that might be better spent creating and governing your own kingdom then your King/Queen may grant you permission to leave their kingdom and create your own and in exchange for paying them some deal of tax they might agree to lend their military support to defend you against anyone who dares to assault your kingdom.
Even if you choose not to be a vassal state, you may form diplomatic alliances with other kingdoms, ensuring your NPCs don’t attack each other, but be careful as these alliances could be dropped at any time.
Armies
NPCs will keep spawning until the number of entities reaches a threshold defined by the available accommodation, equipment, and wages required to support them. Whenever an NPC soldier is slain, rather than respawning like a player would a new NPC will be created using up the newly vacant accommodation (maybe not immediately) upon creation it will go to the defined waypoint set in the kingdom management formspec (accessible only the the highest rank in the guild or others who they granted the privilege to). However if your soldiers are dying faster than the enemies they will be able to loot your soldiers armor and weapons to raise their maximum army size eventually outnumbering you to the point of no return.
These gameplay mechanics are similar to those popularised in mobas like dota, where players can assist NPCS in combat, using them to absorb excess damage while dealing out attacks and casting spells to destroy enemy infrastructure.
Destroying defensive fortifications like towers will stop your soldiers dying as quickly, and destroying accommodation will limit the total amount of soldiers the enemy can support at any given time.
Althought the main way to defend against enemy armies is to build and protect towers the game will probably not include mazing, as it will add undue overhead to the server, as 3d-pathing would become very difficult with the landscape constantly changing from players building and casting spells, particularly earth magic which could drastically change the landscape in a single spell.
Magic
Magic is implemented with the TroMagic mod.
As this mod is still is its infancy there is much more to come.
As the mod improves so to will the available spells.
More about this mod can be learned on its dedicated page.
Or it’s github here.