Alpha 23 Appeals on Steam Unstable

http://www.stonehearth.net/alpha-23-appeals-on-steam-unstable/

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Just to clarify, there are also a bunch of features in this release, like a brand new appeal system. :slight_smile:

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I’m scared to test this and discovery that I will need to rework a lot of thing for my mods :stuck_out_tongue:
Besides that, my bad internet will take some time to download it, so I will delay that for tomorrow, as right now there is a stream and I can’t do both at the same time.

I read the blog post though, and I’m glad that the unstables are now early, so we (modders) can prepare more and players can give better feedback before it is too late

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THANK YOU!!!

Finally, we’re going back to truly unstable builds. Now to see how long this last as habits can be hard to break.

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The other game I play has progressed to calling itself a Beta, and now we’re getting even more unstable. :stuck_out_tongue:

I see the point and I’m excited about more builds, but on the other hand, it’s a little scary. I’ve gotten too used to Alphas not breaking much, and I’m not sure I’m ready to go back. But I don’t want to be behind!

I’m also hoping that this is really a decision the team’s come to on their own and not just under pressure from players. I guess worrying about the mid/endgame is a bit further off now so that reason to stick to save compatibility isn’t as important, but I’m still a bit conflicted about this myself.

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yeah, I get you mate. The big goal for a lot of Stonehearth players, as close as we have to an end-game at the moment, is to build up a large town over a really long time and keep it running as long as possible. The Appeal system is a great reason to start a new town, but for players on the unstable branch, these jankier releases run counter to the way we’ve got used to playing.

Personally, I’m really happy to see that the team have the confidence in their position to go back to janky, rough releases on Unstable. It’s a chance to stymie the rumours that ā€œnothing is happeningā€, and gives hands-on testers more of a chance to be hands-on. But I may well switch back to the Stable branch, simply because I don’t have the time or inclination to be one of those hands-on testers just now.

That said, I tend to start a lot of new towns rather than sticking to the older ones, so perhaps I should try and push myself to do some more hands-on testing hahaha…

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After watching the stream tonight, I’m curious just how compatible A23 will be anyways. With ā€œFineā€ items being removed and a tier system being added, as well as some items being removed like the old benches, I don’t see the old saves working with that.

Even so, the addition of the appeal system will almost require a new world anyway; much in the same way as when the traits system was added. I mean old saves prior to the traits system still worked, just the old 'lings didn’t have any traits assigned to them.

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One important note to keep in mind, only unstable builds are no longer guaranteed to maintain save compatibility. If you are playing on A22.5, and you wait until A23 goes stable, your save will continue to work. However, if you opt-in to the unstable builds, there’s no guarantee of save compatibility. That’s a decision people will need to make if they want to try out new features.

If you want to try our new features and keep growing your old towns, save your A22.5 save somewhere safe, and restore it once A23 is stable. Then you can keep playing it without anything breaking.

Big changes have happened in the past, the team just wrote a migration - for example when the item configuration was completely re-written. There was a migrator that updated all items in-game to the new format when an old save was first loaded.

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Unstable or stable, progress still seems to be painfully slow. We may get the best game ever by 2012 standards, but will anyone, apart from the hardcore fans, care when it eventually reaches maturity?

And 2017 will be another year when that ever dwindling proportion of the community, macOS/Linux ā€˜users’, get nothing.

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On this matter, (I’m going to have an unpopular opinion)
I am happy for your effort on not breaking save compatibility for so long, but from what I read here, it kind off slows you down. I agree that it is a good thing to try to preserve save compatitbility, but I also believe that it is not bad to, once in a while, break it.
It has been how many alpha’s since save game compatibility (SGC) was last broken, and from what I read here, it becomes more and more diffficult to maintain it for every previous version from which compatibility was also preserved, which makes sense when you think about it.
It could be a good idea to break it this time. From some designing experience I have had in the past, I can imagine that you have a list of all kinds of intricate quirks in the code, designed specifically for save compatibility, and that you would get more degrees of freedom in designing software systems when breaking SGC, precisely because of this list of quirks.
I’d argue that a reset is a good idea sometimes, and since the game is in alpha, that is something I believe you can get away with. Just make sure you do everything you wanna do at once.

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A post was split to a new topic: Can’t select roster

One thing you might have noticed is that now all jobs start at level 1 instead of at level 0. This required changing more things than we expected (the exp formula, when do advanced jobs / crafting recipes / equipment / crops / perks get unlocked, etc) but was necessary to start consolidating the crafting and jobs systems. Let us know how that feels too.

If you’re using an old savefile that had some building project that needs the old fine items, but haven’t crafted them yet, you can still spawn them with debugtools.

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So far I am enjoying the new version. I like the appeal system but I’m unsure how the actual mechanics work.

Each Hearthling seems to have a few items that are revealed as likes. Also there are dislikes. One of my hearthlings doesn’t like wooden tables so I built a stone table and chair set. They still sit at the wooden chairs at the wooden table because, I assume, they don’t dislike wooden chairs and those just so happen to be at the wooden tables. Tables and chairs sort of go together at least in the player’s mind. I can see how something like this might be a source of aesthetic discontent in your village.

Buildings full of crates, I assume, will become a thing of the past as they score a -1 :small_blue_diamond: whereas stone chests score a 6 :small_orange_diamond: Crates always seemed to friendly but now I can’t see why you would make them at all.

Just some quick feedback!

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Is there a feature list somewhere?

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That’s okay, once I figure out the new system and update the Bunny Cult for it, I’ll try to make sure the bunny crates have a positive appeal, and will use the regular crates as a base instead of outright wood :wink:

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Should this not be changed for this new unstable release?

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Forgot to mention: For those interested, I am currently going through my mods one by one to test which still at least load with A23.

Once I’ve weeded out which ones can’t even load, I will do a basic test for how well the remaining ones work. I’ve started a thread which I will post once I’ve gotten through them.

Bit slow to work through it; currently living with my grandmother to help care for her, so am frequently having to walk away from my testing for short bouts of time. Hoping to have it up by this evening at the latest, but no promises

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Feedback on appeal numbers is definitely welcome and desired. To answer your question, we made crates -1 appeal because we felt they were purely functional as opposed to decorative. They are still quite worth making, since most raw resources have a negative appeal that isn’t applied when they are in a crate. So they will make your storeroom look a lot better for cheap. But, yeah, you don’t really want to decorate hearthlings homes with them.

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Another few questions that come to mind:
Why so many dislikes?
Is this just for testing purposes?
What are the effects if a crafter doesn’t like their station?
If resources are -1 does that mean only when interacting or is it a radius?
Can you counteract the unappealing dislike with other objects nearby?

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I’ll try to answer:

Why so many dislikes: there are hundreds of items in the game, so we wanted enough dislikes that you would run into some of them in normal play.

Is this for testing purposes: no, this is intended, and we welcome feedback.

What are the affects of a crafter disliking their station: the crafter will think the workbench has -5 appeal so his workshop will be a little uglier; there are no other direct effects.

If resources are - 1 does that mean only when interacting or is it a radius: it’s a radius. However, it only has impact when the resource is on the ground; carried and being used resources have no affect on appeal scores.

Can you counteract unappealing dislike with other objects: yes. A hearthling’s opinion of an area is based on all of the nearby objects, so enough positive objects will cancel out the dislike.

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