[Dev Blog] Desktop Tuesday, Stonehearth Alpha 3 in Limited Testing on Steam

http://stonehearth.net/2014/04/22/desktop-tuesday-stonehearth-alpha-3-in-limited-testing-on-steam/

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I am sooo(!!!) exited about this!!!

I can finaly progress. Will future versions be compatibl with this so i can start to gather all the wood and food i will ever need?

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No guarantees that save will be compatible across releases, Iā€™m afraid. Also, we still have a TON of loading bugs. :frowning:

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The grave stones are here :smile: weeeeee

aaagggghhhhh!!

looks for appropriate image of the internetz exlpoding

canā€™t wait! :smile:

It will have to do!

marches of to make the biggest stockpile ever seen in the history of gaming, keeping it to himself whilst going mad with power. GAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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Farming? Farming! Time to mod some new foodsā€¦ Growable bacon anyone?

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Dibs!!!

(what do you mean be more descriptive!?)

Gonna get me the biggest field you ever did see!

Edit: I just realised the diamond icon reminds me of Goof Troop

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you sir, have an amazing array of gaming references at your disposalā€¦ :+1:

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Goof Troop was an absolutely fantastic game. Puzzles, comedy violence, Disney. Whatā€™s not to love?!

Iā€™ll try to bring out some other obscure references just for you.

Also, loving the new UI, I imagine the complaints I do have with it currently will all be remedied when the other UI functions are implemented!

Edit: Apparently Goof Troop was also a TV show. Who knew?

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My 15 minute attempt at modding in growable bacon is a failure right nowā€¦ Donā€™t worry, Iā€™m working on it.

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I hope all the pets donā€™t turn against the trapper and eat him out of hungerā€¦ The message logs have come back, yay! (still the font is so little I canā€™t read them easily). Chopping bushes now itā€™s gone, all my settlers are hungry and someone left a plate with berries in the ground ._.
Iā€™ll have to reproduce it againā€¦

Pets are always hungry or is it just me?? I should have used them as food, instead of bringing more mouths to feed to the villageā€¦ :sweat_smile: But theyā€™re so cute when they sleep :cold_sweat:

EDIT: When we can build houses with our own designs, will it be possible to see the floor on build mode totally from the top? Drawing a floorplan would be easier that way, I thinkā€¦

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Remind me to never visit. Ever.

Edit: Also, a stray farm designation has become attached to a unit, no idea how and Iā€™m unsure what it wants. I will not give in,

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excellent! @sdee, it seems you have the first of (likely) many moral dilemmasā€¦ :smile:

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Got a chance to try the new alpha today, so time for some bug reporting & such:

-ā€¦ehearth/components/stockpile/stockpile_component.lua:404: attempt to call method ā€˜isā€™ (a nil value)
-radiant/lib/env.lua:6: invalid duration passed to calendar set timer, ā€œ-644.444444444ā€
-stonehearth/components/buffs/buff.lua:138: attempt to call method ā€˜mark_changedā€™ (a nil value)
-stonehearth/services/server/ai/ai_service.lua:75: attempt to call method ā€˜can_acquireā€™ (a nil value)
-stonehearth/services/server/ai/ai_service.lua:71: bad frame transition ā€œstopā€ from ā€œstarting_thinkingā€
-Plenty of C++ lua runtime errors too.
-Missed the error data for it, but my trapper bugged out when ordered to return to camp with a full inventory (so couldnā€™t drop the items etc).
-Guessing due to the earlier above errors, most of my people are idle - only 1 worker is active ATM XD .
-As above, carpenters donā€™t get called carpenters, but stay as workers.
-How exactly do you stop building walls in build mode without having to place something else?
-Quit to main menu button seems to be broken. Still, Stonehearth loads pretty fast for me (at max detail too), so itā€™s no big deal.
-1 basket of turnips = 1 meal. Intended? I ask because 1 basket of berries lasts at least 2 meals.
-In spite of all those error messages above, the 2nd game was fine, with none appearing, nor buggy idle workers.
-When seated at tables for eating, plates are still behind the chairs.
-Dunno how it happened, but a gap appeared in my farm where there should have been some dirt. The turnip remained though, sited so as to be at the proper level as well.
-Farmers seem incapable of dropping off baskets of turnips at a food stockpile :stuck_out_tongue: .
-People still like dropping items on top of other items in stockpiles.

Okay thatā€™s the minor stuff out of the way. I have only three other things to grumble about at this point ( :stuck_out_tongue: ):

  1. Currently, doing something with the UI then hitting ESC to cancel brings up the main menu.

  2. If you want to keep your list of saves to a minimum, you have to delete the old one & make a new one. Overwriting existing saves (and whilst weā€™re at it, naming them) would be appreciated.

  3. Most importantā€¦ I donā€™t really like the unit controls etc being in the top left corner. Most games I play have unit controls no higher than midway up the side of the screen, and most have them along the bottom*. Now, maybe Iā€™m just used to this, but itā€™s a bit jarring to have to look up instead of down, especially when the settlement UI is at the bottom there already.

*WoW has important stuff at the top in the basic UI, but decent players use addons to shift that kind of thing to somewhere easier to see & track.

On the plus sideā€¦ well everything else really :slight_smile: . On the topic of farming, turnips seem to grow pretty fast, making them a good food source in a pinch. Corn takes an age (still growing some as I type - will report later on how good it seems to be)ā€¦ may dissuade people from farming it unless itā€™s very high yield ATM, because of turnips.

**Edit: **Reproduced the trapper bug: stonehearth/components/ai/execution_unit_v2.lua:666: error in args passed to set_think_output: missing argument ā€œbannerā€ of type "userdata: 411D6520 in ā€œget town banner for entityā€ -

Dunno if there was more after the dash, but I donā€™t know how to get the error logs to wrap around or how to extend the window size :stuck_out_tongue: .

**Edit 2: **You can AOE harvest berry bushes before the berries are ripe. Not repeatedly, but it is possible.

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For all the faults and bugs present in this release, I still think this update feels like a huge step forward in terms of having things feel like a game that you can play. Iā€™m not even too worried that saves might not be forward compatible. I saw Steam updating something, wondered what it was, and had a complete ā€œSquee!ā€ moment when I saw that it was Stonehearth.

My favorite things so far:

  1. Worker building ping-pong bug fixed (mostly). It no longer takes people an hour (possible exaggeration) real-time to build a house. The game feels positively zippy now.

  2. Save game. Already this made for good protection against game crashes. The reload stuttered a bit, but came up fine, which saved me from the continuing Trapper movement bug.

Iā€™m so excited. Thanks for the wonderful surprise.

EDIT: Iā€™m still excited, but at least for the moment, I have to retract my statement about save games being protection from crashes. I tried using the ā€œContinueā€ button at the start menu to reload the game state and my game reloaded, but none of the AI states connected, meaning that the AI forgot about jobs that had been given before saving and refused to be reissued those jobs. Eventually everybody just stood around doing nothing.

Even with the problems, I feel this is a major step forward.

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Iā€™m loving what I see so far. Gives me some new things to look into for Nihonjin.

The idea of creating rice patties has me excited yet afraid. :fearful:

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mmm ok, First, Why itā€™s this post not flagged in the Development subforum??

And second, if our citizens can dieā€¦ i think there should be a way to have more villagers; i donā€™t mind if they sudenly pop-up, but i donā€™t want to end my game really fast.

An easy way can be that every X food above Y amount, you get a new villager, And there can be a top of Z villagers alive at a time. So we donā€™t end with world overflowed with people.

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But, when you look at your villagers with your hourglass eyes, arenā€™t they already really old, and thus already about to go? Ah, it must be an efficiency thing. :wink:

Yes, we want to add new people too. But till then, people wonā€™t die unless you go (on average) 3 days without food. Which is something like an hour, in game.

If youā€™re really worried about death, you can turn off starvation in your user settings:

"mods" : {
	"stonehearth" : {
		"enable_hunger" : false
	}
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