I personally think that the recent DT’s have been a little lacking, if for no other reason that we are spending two weeks covering lighting of all things. So my question is this, can anyone from the dev team confirm when the next major update DT will happen. (such as the updated water or stuff from the trello board)
Thanks for your time,
Revenge
What’s wrong with covering the lighting? Lighting is what brings your town to life at night, and getting it right requires a lot of effort. It can also bring cool gameplay, as mentioned in the DT’s. Why don’t you think Lighting is important? (Just wondering)
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The devs actually mentioned and commented about DT’s seemingly laking content
The main reason is that the team is now working on gameplay improvements instead of hard content, a feature can be in works for several weeks and still have nothing to show but a wall of code, which is rather boring of a DT
Water, Traits, emotions all are gameplay/content, but just not something they can show while the feature is in mid-development
Animations, models and art are all flashy and pretty, but features are boring without completion of it, so there’s the reason
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I am fully aware of the status of the game, and if I seem to come off being too negative I am sorry. I know that the team is working on what is the best way to make the game, and I have seen the progress, (I have owned the game since alpha one.) I am asking about when we will get a water based or something of that nature in the desktop Tuesday.
I know they need time to work on water, yet they have spent a lot of time on it as well.
The team has had two months since their last major DT in my opinion, so I assume that they are getting close to a major DT again.
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@thelegorebel To answer your question, I personally feel that Lighting is a GREAT addition to the game, I just feel that spending two weeks on it may be a bit overkill.
Thanks,
Revenge
No no i understand, it’s not like it’s that negativr of a comment in the first place, it is reasonable to feel like the DT’s are rather slow thees days
I do feel like DT will have some major features once all the large goals are met, i believe they all started around the same time, so basically all the content to show are on cool-down
But again, we have no idea how long a feature takes, if it was a matter of a few days for water and such, we’d have a complete game with multiplayer at this point (probably with some bugs)
Though, i must say, i’d love to see some buggy and glitchy prototypes here and there, i don’t feel like DT has to only show more polished features, i feel the community doesn’t really want to see fun stuff as much as we’d like to see the team’s progress in a raw form, even if it’s glitchy as hell
(Remember when models exploded? Those were super fun)
On the one hand, I absolutely love that the devs are “drilling down” into how the deeper strategic and development decisions are being rolled out. It’s one thing to get a DT like we did earlier in the month where they lay out their thinking; but another thing altogether to see that in practice (e.g. seeing how the lighting improvements actually go towards that goal of bringing hearthling interaction with the world to life.)
On the other hand, though, more variety is always nice. These ‘deep dives’ may not be so interesting for people who are more keen on playing the game than on watching its development journey unfold; and while it’s hard to show off unfinished features in a meaningful way I’m sure there’s a chance for some other kind of discussion… a way to get players talking about something not directly linked to upcoming features, but still contributing to that broad goal of improving the feel of the game.
One example which comes to mind would be a DT dedicated to nailing down some lore. Whether it’s the history of the world of Hearth, info about a specific faction, or even just crafting the story of a particular hearthling, I’m sure that plenty of us would be keen to see the narrative side of the game explored a little further.
It’s probably not a good time for another DT dedicated to (visual) art, but that’s something to keep in mind for the future too.
A showcase of player builds would be a cool DT for a “slow week”, or rather, a week where everyone is super busy working on things that aren’t ready to be shown yet.
And one I’d personally love to see would be a compilation of amusing in-game sitautions, bugs, and general unexpected/quirky gameplay; in the style of Rose Belltower’s legendary night watch. That’s another one the community could get involved in, sending in screencaps or videos; but it’s also a chance for the team to show off the quirks of gamedev and how old things sometimes interact weirdly with the new stuff. I’m sure the work on overhauling water must have yielded a few such funny moments.
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If I remember right, there was at least one time they did a player build showcase in the middle of a Desktop Tuesday back when Tom was making them. One of the more impressive builds had stairs. (And fences for a railing on the ledge beside it.)
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yeah, I believe I remember the same DT – back then I was only lurking around the edges of the community, but that particular DT is the one that got me hooked to read them regularly.
We’ve seen player builds in many DTs actually, but they’re usually used to showcase a new feature. And that’s cool, it’s great to see both the player creation and the new feature in action! My suggestion was more of a “let’s look around and see what the community has been up to” sort of take on it – a chance for the “less visible” devs to pipe in with their take on how we’re playing, and how it’s inspiring the way they think about township or the world of Hearth in general.
One of the natural side-effects of the community’s growth is that we have tons and tons more content to explore, so it’s much harder to keep track of it all. And that’s a good thing, really. There’s no way the devs could make an exhaustive survey, but I’m interested to see what’s catching their eyes lately; and how it lines up with, falls short of, or surpasses what they’ve envisioned for Stonehearth.
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