RubyDung: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 21:19, 26 October 2023

One of the only screenshots available of RubyDung.

RubyDung was an unreleased strategy sandbox game created by Markus "Notch" Persson before Minecraft, which was in development from February 2009 or earlier until May 2009 at the latest.<ref group="note">The earliest builds of Minecraft, which is based on RubyDung's codebase, still contain the terrain.png file from RubyDung, and it dates to February 2009.</ref> Not much else is known about the game other than that it was influenced by Dwarf Fortress, and that it was canceled early in development, before being released. Notch's next game would be Minecraft (later known as Minecraft: Java Edition), which is based on RubyDung's codebase.

The name "RubyDung" was a placeholder name for a "dungeon game in the rubylands", the "rubylands" being a rough idea for a game world that Notch had.<ref>Template:Tweet</ref> Rubylands is also the name of a project Notch was developing in early 2008.<ref>https://jvm-gaming.org/t/rubylands-teaser-very-alpha/31375</ref><ref name=ruby>https://web.archive.org/web/20080807172134/http://www.rubylands.com/</ref>

About[edit]

While most of the gameplay features and mechanics are unknown, as the game was canceled at a very early state, the game was meant to be a clone of Dwarf Fortress had it been finished. It would have been easier to play with a heavy focus on accessibility, unlike the former game which has been remarked for being quite complicated and unfriendly to beginners. Since the game was in an early development stage, no GUI, text, or any other such features appear in any of the existing screenshots of the game.

The game featured a 3D isometric perspective, as opposed to Dwarf FortressTemplate:'s 2D ASCII tile-based graphics. It also included a 3D texture mapper, and grass and cobblestone textures which were randomly colored on the fly. The terrain generation was quite varied, containing many bumps, hills, and monoliths. Unlike in the blocky Minecraft, many surfaces were sloped. Trees using billboarded sprites were present in the game as well, which are numerous in the screenshots where they are present. In a screenshot of an earlier version of the game, there was also a dirt material which formed maze-like dirt paths, and an alternate, earlier grass texture less resembling the one seen in Minecraft. Minions existed which the player could follow around in a first-person view.

After the game was canceled early in development, the codebase would later be reused for Minecraft. Most notably, the same grass block and cobblestone block textures that appear in the screenshots of the later versions of RubyDung would also appear in the earliest builds of Minecraft.

Rubylands[edit]

RubyDung would likely have reused some gameplay elements from a related unreleased project by Notch, Rubylands.<ref>https://theintraclinic.com/archive/</ref> This was going to be a group manager where players would assemble, equip, level up, and pay heroes. A local town would provide quests for the heroes, which the player could send them on. When they returned, a replay animation of the quest would show, and the player would get to distribute/sell/equip any loot gathered. The player would gain experience points to level up, and the player's level determined the size and the number of the groups one could have. The player could also construct better headquarters.<ref>https://jvm-gaming.org/t/rubylands-teaser-very-alpha/31375/6</ref> There was code implemented for the player to fight enemies, fire heroes, and hire new ones, shown with text on the screen.<ref name=alpha>https://jvm-gaming.org/t/rubylands-teaser-very-alpha/31375/9</ref> The only known creatures implemented were the bunny and the hero. It is unknown if they had any sprites.<ref name=alpha />

Items would have existed in three forms:

Normal Items - These would have been carried, stackable, and have a single use, disappearing afterwards. They would have mostly been collectibles and materials. Notch gave examples of such items as: Healing Potion, Crossbow Bolt, and Dragon Hide.<ref name=ruby />
Multi Use Items - These would have been similar to normal items, except rendered as single items with more than a single use. They would not have been stackable. Notch gave examples of such items as: Wand of Healing, and Hot Meal.<ref name=ruby />
Equippables - These would have consisted of an item type, a material, an optional prefix, and an optional suffix. The item type would decide what slot the item could have been equipped in, such as a helmet for the head slot. Materials would range from normal ones (iron, wood, etc) to exotic ones that would require hero traits to use (glass, dragonscale, etc.) Notch gave examples of such items as: Iron Boots, Legendary Silver Necklace of Gloom, Decorated Wool Cape, and Copper Sword of Dragon Slaying.<ref name=ruby />
- Prefixes would have been single adjectives (Legendary, Blessed, Fine) and would modify the item stats. Suffixes would be in the form "of <word>", and add special abilities to the item depending on the suffix.

Earlier, Notch had also worked on several other unreleased projects with similar names.<ref>Template:Cite</ref><ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20110320152953/http://imgur.com/a/B5WkP</ref> These included:

Ruby - a free-scrolling JRPG type engine with monster battles, in which players could select options in the menu and attack monsters, complete with animations and damage popups.
Rubylands X - a tile based roguelike with line of sight and fancy lighting effects, a fireball spell, and exploding barrel chain reactions.
Rubyland - a first person tile based dungeon crawler with variable floor/ceiling heights, an animated fire texture, variable colored fog, and per-tile brightness.

Creation of Minecraft[edit]

File:200902092053 terrain.png

The terrain.png file from RubyDung.

RubyDung is part of what inspired Notch to make Minecraft. He had wanted RubyDung to have both isometric and first-person viewing modes, but when he tried implementing this, he thought that the textures were too blurry and distorted when viewed up close. Shortly after working on RubyDung, Notch came across the game Infiniminer. He decided that this game’s first-person block-based system would be a better choice for the kind of gameplay he had in mind for RubyDung, which was then repurposed into the cave game tech test, which later became Minecraft.

On October 30, 2009, Notch talked about RubyDung on his blog, The Word of Notch, in an entry titled "The Origins of Minecraft".

MinecraftTemplate:'s source code came from RubyDung, and as such, the earliest versions of Minecraft still internally refer to themselves as RubyDung, and still contain the terrain.png file from RubyDung, which dates to February 2009.

Gallery[edit]

RubyDung[edit]

Other Rubylands games[edit]

A screenshot of Ruby.

A screenshot of Ruby.
A fight screen in Ruby with what looks like yellow bird monsters.

A fight screen in Ruby with what looks like yellow bird monsters.
The title screen of Rubylands X.

The title screen of Rubylands X.
A screenshot of Rubylands X.

A screenshot of Rubylands X.
A screenshot of Rubyland.

A screenshot of Rubyland.

Notes[edit]

Template:Notelist

References[edit]

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