A Message to the Devs and the Community

[sdee]

You are all very thoughtful and wonderful people; thank you for this thread and for your support, and your thoughts.

@max99x said a lot of the things I would have said, so to elaborate from there, and as the person who coordinates much of the work that happens on the game I’d offer these points:

• Whatever you plan, imagine first, above all things, that starting in August, I move onto another project and have only an hour a week or so to converse and coordinate stuff with you. Same is true for whatever people who remain on SH working on bugs; their primary goal will be to fix bugs only they can fix. So whatever you all want to do, has to mostly be done on your own.
• I’d recommend that instead of trying to get something into our um, incredibly complex codebase, that you package your efforts as mods, because mods can be easily turned on and off, thereby preventing, say, the rogue AI in some feature from CPU clobbering the rest of the game.
• As per our EULA and “the one rule” be super clear about who gets credit for which parts of which mods, because people should get credit for the things they do and keep everything free because that helps us avoid “you took my thing and made money from it” rabbitholes.
• If you encounter stuff as you make mods that you would like to be easier to do, collect these all together and send us regular digests; we could add this to our modding API.
• Appoint a representative to speak for you, to help with communication and to act as a single point of contact and coordinate
• If, by December of 2018, you have a mod (or a few) that is already on workshop and that is already well tested and well loved, and your representative states that you collectively would like this to be the case, there may be a way for us to auto-enable that mod for everyone who plays the game on steam, making it essentially, a part of the 1.1 release. Of course, someone from our team would probably want to go through the mod with you to make sure that it’s sane and fits the goals of the game.

No promises! But I see this as a way this could work out amazing.

[megashub]

@max99x

On the point of open-sourcing the C++ engine. We have certainly discussed this, and the decision not to do it is not final. However, if you look at the practical aspects, it does not provide much beyond what is possible with Lua, and while game mods (Lua/JS/etc.) are well-supported by the infrastructure including multiplayer, the Steam Workshop, and so on, distributing engine mods (C++) is a much more complex problem, and opens up all kinds of legal and security concerns (since it would involve distributing executables that can do whatever they want to your system). If you run into concrete cases of features or changes that absolutely require C++, reach out to Stephanie to continue this discussion. I think if by the time 1.1 rolls around your patch proves to be a success, that will strengthen your bargaining position immensely.

The beauty of open source projects is that code mergers become community-reviewed. The standard disclaimers around installing open source executables would apply.

The real value in having access to the C++ source code would be so the community can study it in minute detail in order to refactor it over to something non-proprietary. Refactoring it was never something the dev team had the cycles or the calendar time to spend. But effectively crowd-sourcing it is possible. More than one team has refactored Glitch since its assets were released for free access. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the same could happen for SH too. There’s clearly enough love and support out there for the property to conceivably thrive for many years to come.

@sdee for visibility

[Redimo]

Hello Developers.

First off, I wana say thank you for this game. Its an amazing game, that was built upon your visions.
I am happy for you that created it and were able to work on it for so long.
As a kinda “Developer” myself I understand your reasoning. Putting the end on something you develop is always hard, because lets just add this and do this and that…

I work in Home Automation and my boss always has to step in because I like to overdue things. I am glad that you are now at that point where you can put an ending point on the story of Stonehearth.

But, sadly, its not that easy.

I must say, after watching the stream, that I am dissapointed. Note, I did not watch the whole stream.

First off, the fence Tool. Let me tell you first that you have my deepest admiration for taking the old building editor and completely redoing it - the result is amazing and a showcase of what real development should look like. But now, you’re completely abandoning the Fence tool? The option is grayed out and will never work - something which, to my understanding of your game - is a fundamental part of the building tool.
Lets be real: The biggest appeal of Stonehearth is the ability to create your own “World”. Design everything to match your imagination, your story.
Not finishing it and just creating items and making people manually place them is the wrong way of putting and end to development. It basically goes against everything else you’ve done in the new editor.

And now we get to the NA. Note here, I have not played them, just read from other people.
So the problem is that all Combat Units attack animals - because, in a quick and dirty way, you made the animals hostile.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand that the quick and dirty way is often used to prototype and test changes, see how they work out and feel. But showing absolutely 0 will to do anything large about it is absolutely pathetic. You’re basically releasing a half arsed Civilization to please the Kickstarter goals, and let it continue to be the Alpha mess it is.

I understand what you are doing and that you are trying to finish the game whilst you still have the liberty to decide yourself when its done. But, if you are gonna leave it in the mess it is right now (Note that I haven’t even touched on all prevailing Bugs I’ve found, and whilst you did say you will be doing bug fixes until the end of the year, I highly doubt that time frame is enough to fix them), you should make all the code open source and release it under a “no commercial usage”-license.

The modding tools are good, yes, but to do any real change and fix to the game after you “finished” it, we need it all. And whilst I do think that you might improve performance like you said in earlier streams, I am pretty sure that some individuals of the community might be able to push more out of it, maybe even doing a real switch to Multi-Threading.

Don’t get me wrong - your developers did an amazing job and I don’t want to imagine the headache you all had whilst creating - and revamping - your building editor. But making something open source often ends up creating a better product, specially in something like games.

So please, at least make sure to release all of the code.

[MelOzone]

@coasterspaul

I’d really like to see something like the old mechanical mod brought back - and I’ve had some ideas for that, but not the means to actually make it all myself.

I really want to take a look into this, but seeing as my schedule and real life (and other games) make wonders for my time and motivation, I’m fearful to promise anything at this point. I barely visit Discourse these days

[DaniAngione]

Thank you for this reply and for everything else

I’ll keep this in mind for the near future then!

[Jay_Carr]

@sdee

If, by December of 2018, you have a mod (or a few) that is already on workshop and that is already well tested and well loved, and your representative states that you collectively would like this to be the case, there may be a way for us to auto-enable that mod for everyone who plays the game on steam, making it essentially, a part of the 1.1 release. Of course, someone from our team would probably want to go through the mod with you to make sure that it’s sane and fits the goals of the game.

This is a huge offer folks. Has someone taken up the banner on this one? it would fantastic if there were a code base built straight into the game that this mod community could have a say in.

[DaniAngione]

@Jay_Carr

Has someone taken up the banner on this one?

I plan on tackling at least some of the possibilities and trying to organize/mobilize it in a way that is kept along with other efforts - I’ll probably have a more outlined plan tomorrow

[Nikolay]

Perhaps the game should become open-source not immediately after the release, but after 1.1, when the support will be terminated.

[coasterspaul]

One thing I just realized I’m now sorely missing (enough to groggily pull my phone from my charger and type this up at midnight) that I hadn’t really given a thought about until now was the crafter overhaul Richard (I think?) was designing… quite a while ago, now. I know there was some heated debate over all that at the time and I can definitely see why some of it was deemed out of scope. And then, as far as I can tell, it was all pushed under the rug.

But the basic concept of placed items affecting crafting stations… I feel like that would’ve really tied building and decorations into the game in a way that Stonehearth, to me, still seems to be missing.

Can items give buffs to Hearthlings in a small range nearby? If so, we’ve got enough to mod a very simple version of this system in. And it could be repurposed for other things: arrow slots that give your archers an advantage, for example.

[Nikolay]

@max99x

at the end of July to work on my own tiny indie project

Is it a game project? Will you show it to us?

[SachielMF]

It will probably be a tower defense game called Worromind. Set in a stormy but cosy desert, you play as a Riff Clacer, a cute bird that has to defend her nest from incoming so called Verenarines, a race of evil scavenging humanoids, by calling more of your kind to your help.

[max99x]

@SachielMF

It will probably be a tower defense game called Worromind. Set in a stormy but cosy desert, you play as a Riff Clacer, a cute bird that has to defend her nest from incoming so called Verenarines, a race of evil scavenging humanoids, by calling more of your kind to your help.

Woah, how did you know?!

[DaniAngione]

Damn, I already hate those Riff Clacers.

Tower Defense sounds fun but I guess it could work nicely if you were the Verenarine instead and it was an open world rpg or something…

Nah, that would never work.