Boxing and scaling are features that could help enhance building techniques for a voxel construction game.
Design Scaling
This means building a construction in the usual style with normal blocks in a separate 3D design mode much like creative mode. However when the construction is completed, it is then represented in the Minecraft game world as a single scaled-down object without normal game block rules.This will allow players to use the familiar simple block building formula, but to build things that exhibit new and exciting functionalities (like ships, wagons, train cars, and catapults.)
Moving Parts and Wheels
The 3D block design interface will have a block method for denoting moving and pivoting parts. This is what will allow the creation of special devices like cannons and physics enabled devices like pulleys.In the case of wheels for instance, one way of doing this is to have varying lengths of axles which would first require arranging blocks with holes. A player would have to place the blocks with holes correctly first, and at the right distance, in order for an axle to snap into place correctly. Then gears, levers. wheels, etc. could snap onto the axles.
In the case of pulleys, hole blocks and axles would first need to be placed. Subsequently placing pulleys could be much like the multi-line tool in MS Paint. A symbolic rope would show up as a tangential line to a pulley icon until it was snapped onto an axle.
Various alternative materials could be swapped on the same parts, perhaps with weight and durability effecting performance statistics.
Artificial Limitations of Design Scaling
There would need to be restrictions on the number of blocks and moving parts one could include in a scaled object. Perhaps in-game upgrades would stretch those restrictions.One note of interest is that all of these designs could be created before the actual moment of creation in the game world. All necessary resources will still need to be acquired and delivered to the correct building before the object gets created in the game world. (In other words, perhaps that is enough of a limitation all by itself.)
Design Boxing
Sometimes circuits and automated tasks can feel like they take up an exorbitant amount of block space for their purposes. This would be especially true in a more advanced Minecraft world.
Yet again, we do not want to rob the game of its simple design formula. We would not want to betray established techniques for building redstone circuits etc.
Boxing means that you get to spread your legs when designing a circuit or a device, but then it would be reduced down to a usable box that interfaced with the game world with the same number of inputs and outputs it needs to operate correctly. (These boxes would almost always be larger than a single block.)
This has several immediately apparent benefits:
- Players could be liberally extravagant and creative with designs that would otherwise be spatially constricted. This would allow for more liberal thought processes, and more numerous functional features.
- Players could alter designs and circuits easily. These constructions are often otherwise shut away by aesthetic blocks
- Players could nest these boxes into manageable, workable portions.
- Players could create more functional buildings and constructions that were also more aesthetically pleasing.
Interfaces
- Input and Output Types
- Doors for settlers
- Slots/Holes for items
- contact knobs for redstone wires
- interactive devices
- levers, buttons, etc.
Box Usage
As with scaling, boxes could be designed without having the resources necessary to construct that design. Players would still need to acquire all the resources necessary in order to manifest that box in the game world.
Thus, it is still sufficiently challenging. Players would need to prioritize which designs to use according to scarcity and variety of resources.
Boxing and Scaling in Combination
Boxing is about tidiness, and scaling is about size and operation. If you combine boxing and scaling, then you should eventually be able to create a myriad of profoundly cool things, including game-world portable electronics.
