Alpha 15 on Steam Latest!

chocobos that can use the force mabey? :laughing:

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So how do i get this version? My steam is not updating or anything like that :(. Would love to play the new version

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Steam unstable branch
Right click stonehearth in your library click properties then click beta’s then select latest
Your stonehearth should update

What does “Add support for manually unlockable crafter recipes.” mean?

Sounds like next to automatically unlocking recipes with levels, there will be some system for special recipes that can only be researched, found or bought. Not completely sure though.

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I am a little concerned by this trend of limiting what we can do in game to “fix” performance issues. First a citizen cap, now an inventory cap. This is rather troubling. It just seems like it punishes those with better machines, while sweeping under the rug any performance issues in code related to lots of entities. Wouldn’t it be better to have no caps at all, and then people can report what sort of practical limits they’re running into to drive development of better systems and/or nail down gameplay expectations and minimum system requirements?

I mean, this is an alpha after all.

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How many people were ever able to get past the max 50 citizen cap we have now before that cap was ever put in? I don’t think I ever saw someone pass 30. Most people had to just reject new citizens or the game would become unplayably slow - now they don’t have to do that manually every in-game day. This current max cap may raise later if needed and able, but honestly, at least from the original plans, Stonehearth isn’t about having a city of hundreds or more anyways.

I don’t know if it’s just a fluke from loading an old save or what, but the inventory cap is pretty far away for me. Mine’s at 1200 with 7 citizens (and I have less than 300 items.) This cap is “based on how many hearthlings a village has”, so it should be able to keep up with your town. And for a game partially [and apparently more in the future - “we’ll be adding gameplay elements around inventory in the future”] about resource and/or inventory management, is this really such a bad thing?

Also, don’t forget the limiting the queue per type of crafter to 20. Though, again, how many people will actually pass that in normal gameplay?

Lastly, depending how these limits are coded in, it might - just might - be possible to override them with mods if all else fails.

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Well, you can start getting pretty close to the queue limit with some of the more complex crafters. For example, the blacksmith needs bars at hand at all times to make sure you can make stuff when you need it, because the game does not naturally support that kind of functionality. My blacksmith has to maintain all of the bar types if I want to make anything. The cook would be another good example of this.

If the devs intend to limit micromanagement, then the crafting queue will be more of a problem as time goes on. The carpenter, to maintain a pool of common tools and decorations, already has 14 items in his queue, not including lanterns or shop signs. If there are other crafters that have similarly large amounts of things to make, you could be running into this more and more.

The inventory limit is annoying, but I guess I understand it. Its just gonna be more and more of a problem the longer someone plays the game, or as they add additional stuff to the game. I guess it just comes down to what the dev’s targets are as far as the game goes. Toss out the idea of a massive city like they showed in the promotional materials, and I expect everyone will have a little bit more realistic ideas about the game.

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for this issue there is the smartcrafter mod - [MOD] Smart Crafter :wink: im not sure if it works for a15 but it should xD

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Yes,
It is intended that all of these limits are moddable (I will add modd-ability for crafter queues next unstable release). In fact, the hearthling cap is simply a value in user_settings.json and can be overridden easily. It looks like
"mods" : {
“stonehearth” : {
“max_citizens” : 100
}
}

The inventory cap is tuned per population. So you can create a mod and mixin to ascendary_population.json and rayyas_children_population.json the following line:
“inventory_capacity_equation”: “math.max(num_citizens * 150, 1200)”

You can change that equation to whatever you want. It can be if you’d like:
“inventory_capacity_equation”: “1000000”

The point of the limits are to provide a meaningful message to the average player about game expectations. I’m also very excited for implementing more inventory based gameplay because it means we’ll finally have an answer to the age old question of “why bother building things?” Building becomes more powerful when you can’t just keep hording infinite resources to gain networth. This way we can better guide the player to the ultimate goal of the game, which is to go from humble camp to bustling city (and a bustling city needs buildings!).

Thanks for the feedback!
-Yang

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And like always a perfect explanation from you :smiley: Thank You! :heart::heart::heart:

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Mods are irrelevant to me. I don’t want to play a game that modders make, I want to play the game the developers make.

Not being rude, I like what modders do to add content to a game, I just don’t like using them to fix game issues.

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Dont take it wrong but then you cant enjoy stoneheath to the fullest ^^ Stonehearth is maked for Modding :wink:

But until its not full released everything can be changed :wink: So it was good that you give your feedback - so they can perhaps add this to the settings xD

Oh, I know that mods add a ton of cool things to a game, and extend its lifespan, etc. I get that. Im just not a fan of them being used as an excuse for the developers, for lack of a better term. Again, not saying anyone is doing this, just to be clear.

On topic though, @yshan ‘Bustling City’ is a pretty nebulous term. To me, that is the image that was invoked in the original promotional materials for the game, but it might not be what it means to you and the other devs. Its really hard for us looking in to see what your final vision is, and thats okay. Things change over time, its all good. As a sidenote, building would be more powerful if there was a point to building things. A rather arbitrary Shelter rating system doesn’t give you any reason to actually build houses for people. Or workshops, for that matter.

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What is the 1200 in the equation for? confused on that part.

main reason i am confused is that my max is 3000 which is just the first part before the comma. 20 max population; which is what I find my computer handles fluidly. Of course haven’t tried to increase my population just yet (More focused on the building mechanic). I don’t mind the an inventory limit, as long the selling and buying works. Having that problem someone else mentioned in anther post about selling things and not getting the gold.

Anyway was only curious.

Also note my inventory maintains roughly 2700-2800 items at least, so i’m pretty close. No worries in reaching the 3000 max it lists, since I’ve been building…

this the one you’re talking about?

if so, it will be fixed in the next build :slightly_smiling:

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yeah… it is… And I figured it would be since it was mentioned; hence me referring to other post. Thanks. :smiley:

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@Tamorr
That’s there to make it so the minimum inventory count is 1200 (math.max basically says take whichever of these 2 numbers are larger). This makes it so even when you start out with just 7 hearthlings, you still get 1200. It was just a number I played with and seemed to work out all right.

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@thedrgnrbrn
Agreed on buildings not being clear for their immediate purpose at the moment. We do have designs aimed to make that more clear – they will come in a future alpha.

Thanks!
-Yang

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Ah ok. Figured it was something like that. Although was almost thinking it was that plus it… Thanks for the clarification on that. :smiley: