As ti went on, Lucas held a few etings with Hector and others.
He explained Minecraft's gaplay and main ideas in more detail.
The plan was to release a mobile version and later a VR version.
But for now, the PC version was the main focus.
After setting all aspects of Minecraft, the whole developnt team inevitably entered overti mode.
Ti was very tight, after all.
But compared to Minecraft, what was finished first, in just half a month, were two DLCs for Don't Starve.
Reign of Giants and Shipwrecked brought in new creatures and new ways to play.
The content of these two versions wasn't actually that much.
With the existing ga frawork and Lucas's detailed design drafts, it didn't take too much work.
The new maps, monsters, and extra content reignited players' excitent for Don't Starve.
In the ga industry, aside from the Don't Starve players who were happy with the DLC,
so companies and teams started announcing new sandbox gas they were working on.
Studios under SkyNova and NetDragon also joined in.
They didn't reveal much, but from the released info, the thes seed pretty varied.
Lucas took so ti to check them out. Many of the developers' ideas just left him speechless.
For example, so basically copied Don't Starve's model. They also used survival as the the, but only changed the art style and perspective—switching from top-down to third-person over-the-shoulder or first-person view—while promoting it as a sandbox ga.
Lucas found it hard not to roll his eyes. Not that the gas looked terrible, but from what was shown, they were more like plain survival gas with just a tiny bit of open-world elents, yet they labeled themselves sandbox gas just because sandbox was popular at the ti.
There were quite a few gas like this. So didn't copy Don't Starve directly but tried small changes.
For example, setting the ga at sea, where players play as pirates building their own ships, sailing to find legendary creatures, fighting other pirates, and searching for treasure islands.
So set the background in an apocalypse, still survival-based but with zombies and mutants as the enemies.
So turned it into an RPG, where players act as demigods, hunting legendary monsters, with the ultimate goal of killing the Olympian gods.
It's clear that Don't Starve's take on sandbox gaplay gave many ga designers in the industry a lot of ideas and inspiration.
It's just that, in Lucas's view, many of these gas have nothing to do with sandbox at all, yet they're all being marketed as sandbox.
It feels a lot like when Rockstar made GTA the gold standard for open-world, and suddenly tons of gas—whether action-adventure, FPS, or RPG—started calling themselves open-world just to ride the trend.
On major gaming forums, players were buzzing with discussions.
"What the hell! I'm sick of this. How many tis has this happened already this month? Another sandbox ga?"
"My god, Don't Starve started this trend, and now how many studios are making these?"
"To be fair though, as soone who cares a lot about graphics, these look a bit easier to accept than Don't Starve."
"The graphics are nice, but who knows about the gaplay."
On the forums, players kept complaining.
Still, aside from a few sandbox projects that already looked weak from their proposals,
many announced projects did grab players' attention and built up quite a bit of hype.
Clearly, sandbox as a new genre felt fresh to a lot of players.
Even while saying "there are too many, I can't handle it anymore," players' actions showed otherwise—they were still welcoming the new gas.
But one thing is for sure: with so many sandbox projects, so of them are bound to crash and burn.
......…
Lucas noticed the sandbox craze being talked about in the industry but didn't pay much attention.
His main task now was to finish Minecraft.
The full version of Minecraft clearly wasn't progressing very fast.
But a demo for PC, made for testing, was already done.
This demo still lacked many features.
Not just tech progression—the crafting system wasn't even included yet.
Simply put, this version was a heavily stripped-down creative mode.
The whole ga was very rough. There were no art assets yet, no UI, nothing—just a ssy placeholder build.
It even had bits that reminded people of Don't Starve and Dark Souls, which felt totally out of place.
But Lucas didn't care much; these would be replaced later anyway.
After all, most early demos of gas looked like this.
Lucas entered the ga to test it.
Right now, Steve wasn't even Steve yet—just a block.
Yeah, just a plain white block, no pixel face at all, which looked really weird.
Controlling the character, Lucas flew into the sky and looked around.
Rivers, mountains, forests, grasslands—the basic terrain generation was random.
Of course, "random" still followed a self-consistent logic.
It couldn't be truly random; it used formulas to calculate resources.
If it were truly random, you might end up with a world with no water, or just endless ocean and no land.
The chances were tiny, but still possible.
He quit and re-entered.
After trying several tis and looking carefully, Lucas nodded slightly.
For now, he hadn't found any big problems.
Of course, more sample testing would still be needed later.
As for the art assets,
players in this parallel world had much stronger average setups than in his previous life.
So hardware wasn't an issue, and the quality could be pushed higher.
After all, good visuals were part of the ga experience.
No player would ever say, "Forget 4K, I'd rather stick with beautiful 360p full of jagged edges," as long as the gaplay stayed intact.
"For the visuals, make the blocks feel more textured, and improve the textures for different materials."
"And for special materials like lava and seawater, make sure their style matches the normal blocks. Lighting will be key too—fire, sunlight, and so on should affect materials more realistically, like glass or water."
Lucas said to Rachel.
Rachel didn't reply, just nodded and noted the key points.
"Alright, you guys can go. Hector, stay for a bit—I'll explain the crafting and tech systems in detail. Then make a demo prototype for that," Lucas turned to Hector and said.
(End of The Chapter)
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