What would you like to come out of this?

Until today I had this running poll at the top of the site asking the same question. The options were:

1. Content creation application (like WorldMachine)
2. 3ds max plugins
3. Fully dynamic sandbox game (nextgen Minecraft)
4. Dwarf Fortress universe with rich graphics

It ran for several months and collected more than 5000 votes. I cannot tell exactly how many votes. For some reason Blogger's poll widget went crazy around 4000 and started counting backwards for a while, then forwards, then backwards again, then forward, and so on. Blogger is so buggy it makes you feel safe: at least you know these same engineers are not working on life support systems.

Since I am removing the poll, I thought I should comment on the results. The most popular option was "Fully dynamic sandbox game (nextgen Minecraft)", with 2445 votes. This is hardly a surprise since the poll ran along Minecraft's explosive raise. So am I making a nextgen Minecraft? No, I'm sorry. I think Minecraft should be left to Notch. Also there are too many Minecraft clones. I see little point in making yet another one. I would also wait a few years until physics simulations can be done at sub-pixel levels.

The second most popular option was "Dwarf Fortress universe with rich graphics", with 2069 votes. It was surprising that it got so many votes. It was very close to Minecraft, which I assumed was far more popular than Dwarf Fortress. Maybe it tells something about the readers of this site. Am I making a visually rich Dwarf Fortress? No, it is not that either. Dwarf Fortress is too rich, I think I would barely scratch the surface or would take me forever. I want to release something sooner than that.

And then there were other two options about content creation: 3ds max plugins and a world building application like World Machine. 3ds max plugins got almost no votes, only 319. The world building application got 833. This is higher than what I expected, I assumed most of the participants were mostly interested in games. If you have been following my lasts posts, you would know I have been developing this world building application for a long time now. Hopefully I will get it into a state it can be released so you can play with it and create your own worlds, and export them to game engines or content tools like 3ds max. As to what the poll is concerned, this is the option I have chosen.

I am also starting a game. As I said before, it is not a Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress clone. It is more about the survival and exploration of a very large world. I will reveal more information in the near future. I want to thank all the poll participants and apologize for going into a different direction.