Scratch that!
Tirnua needs to be new and fresh. The Tirnua team has stated that it's going to be community centered. So they have provided us with a sort of starting point. It's going to revolve around nature, and the preservation of it. That's great start!
I hate the idea of uploading files from the hard drive instead of creating items in game. The Tirnua team should provide us with the tools to make amazing things, not the tools to upload some crap we made in Paint. No avatar book, no social networking sites, no web browser, just a Windows executable that unpacks itself onto your hard drive and loads information from a server.
Although the game revolves around nature, that doesn't mean our creative boundaries should be limited to tree huts and roofless boxes made out of twigs. We should be able to utilize features that show what can be created with recycled materials and also ways in which we can create a stylish lounge and yet be eco-friendly. I think that the exchange of seeds instead of money is great, seeds can do more than paper money if you think about it. Seeds can create plant life. Plants can be used as building materials for your home or business.
With the idea of nature in mind, I think it would be great if they also added a lesson about energy conservation. Obviously, using solar cell shingles to power your home and transportation instead of coal and oil will cost less, and will consume less of your resources that would be used for other things, such as building materials.
You can either consume the most energy and live with the fewest resources or consume the least and have the most available to you.
I commented on a blog entry a while back. I dislike the wiki, and have yet to even create a wiki account. But I did comment. Feeback is feedback, right? Well, this is what I said:
One major flaw in TSO was the fact that we were so limited in what we could design and build. It was hard to create a space where we just wanted to sit down and chat with our virtual pals. You were getting somewhere with Custom Content, however you would still be limited by the TSO's rendering engine and the 2-D perspective. With Tirnua, we are creating a whole new game from the start. We can now think outside of the boundaries that TSO set for us.
We should be able to create anything we want. We should be able to create our own pieces of furniture or anything else for that matter out of geometrial forms, such as cubes or cylinders or whatever. We could create our own beds, we could create our own sofas, chairs, toilets, plasma screen TVs, sound systems, games..we could use whatever colors we like, we could make our own designs for blankets and curtains and countertops. We could crate our own styles, like what you see on HGTV, only with Tirnua, you are only limited by your imagination.
I've always dreamed of being able to design someone's house. To design it around their dreams and their lives. I've always wanted to design my own house. With TSO I was so limited with what I could design, what I could build, what I could buy. In Tirnua I should have the ability to put my signature on everything I make. I shouldn't be stuck with a few wall paint colors or wallpaper designs or floor patterns or blanket styles...we shouldn't have to use a sperate application to create a simple wall paint color or wallpaper texture or blanket or roof or whatever. This should be offered to us in the virtual environment. If we implement a full color pallette such as what is included with MS Paint, then we could use whatever colros we like, wherever. Then we can shape it into anything we want. We wouldn't be stuck with the simple geometric shapes that are offered to us, we could shape them into anything we wanted. WE could transform a cube into a bed, or we could use the cube as the headboard and round the edges of another cube so we could create the mattress. Then we can shape even more cubes into the supports for the bed. Then we color these pieces whatever we want, put our own style of shets and blankets on the bed, put a flower or two of three on the headboard and voila...I have my dream bed!
But, the only problem with my dream bed is that space in my virtual house is limited. So I cut some pieces out of the headboard (which is a cube, btw, not flat, but it could be if i wanted), and create space for a bookshelf, a place for decorative plants, and a space for an alarm clock, and finally one for my photo album and seashells.
And if I also built the equipment to do so and was able to pay other virtual people to mass produce the bed in a factory which I constructed or bought, then I can get my bed design in virtual households everywhere. Essentially, I just designed my own bed, mass produced it for sale in stores, paid some workers, and creating a mini game for the workers, all at the same time. It would be like the robot factory 2.0.
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So, even with this design overview they have posted, things can be manipulated and changed. The virtual world is ever changing.
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