[BUG & SUGGESTIONS] Geomancer

Summary:
Placing one of the terrain block stones on top of one of the boulders that spawn on terrain causes issues. I assume (although didn’t test) that the same would happen with similar objects like trees or plants.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Craft a Terrain Block Stone (any type)
  2. Place it on top of an object like a boulder and wait for the Geomancer to cast it
  3. Profit?

Expected Results:
I dunno what I expected, really. I was mostly forcing issues to track them down :joy: I think that maybe placing them on top of such objects shouldn’t even be possible.

Actual Results:


(the first 2 errors in the log are unrelated)
The Boulder was on the yellow circle. Curiously, when the block was placed, the stone “disappeared” and got teleported up - the block was never actually placed and a new block order appeared on TOP of the now flying stone. My guess is that the logic of what happened was this:

  • The boulder requires to be on top of the terrain, so when the terrain was placed, the boulder “jumped up”
  • The terrain couldn’t be placed because the spot it was being placed was moved; so the order to place it moved up with the boulder

Notes:
I’d like to take this opportunity to say that the Geomancer is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

No, wait. Let me rephrase this. IT IS AMAZING.
The art, the animations, the design, the potential, the golems… I’m just… speechless.
Once again you guys do something so beautiful and cool. Gee.
This feels bittersweet this time. It’s both the happiness of seeing the great things you can do with Stonehearth and the sadness of knowing these will be the last ones.

Thank you very much for everything.

Suggestions
And finally would like to leave a suggestion!
Perhaps it would be cool if the geomancer could also craft 1x1x1 terrain blocks - you know, for all our fine tuning needs and such, building terrain walls inside caved areas, etc. I know that you could theoretically make these simply by placing the larger chunks and then mining them (like sculpting) BUT IMO it would be much simpler to just have a 1x1x1 block. That would give the class almost infinite potential :heart:
To make resources more reasonable, it could be a multiple recipe, crafting several 1x1x1 (like 4 or 6) per recipe!

Version Number and Mods in use:
Latest (r870), no mods except DebugTools and Tree Stumps.

4 Likes

Just adding another bug;

Geomancer’s products appear as decorations on the Builder. It doesn’t matter how you place them though, they always make the building fail:

A couple of suggestions regarding that, if I may:

  • Either allow them to be built using the builder (which would be great!) or remove them from the builder’s view.
  • They probably deserve their own category for containers and placement menu; and stockpile filters :slight_smile:
2 Likes

HAHAHAH Ok, you guys gonna hate me for this one;
But I did it:

  • Grown terrain “overrides” stockpiles - it moves the content but they still count as full;

First make stockpiles:

Then place a “layer” terrain stone in the middle of it.
Extra bug report: The Geomancer is pointed out as “idle” when placing the Geomancer things

As the terrain grows, the wood logs are moved. The stockpile remains filled, however.
Doesn’t throw any errors AND the materials remain accessible - so not sure it could cause any serious issues other than maybe workers trying to path/restock to that stockpile.

3 Likes

Last piece of feedback on the Geomancer (for now)
Promise!

This one isn’t a bug - just a minor grievance.
I love the golems! But…
Their model might be a bit too big. The harvest one looks cool chopping trees and such. But the mining one looks a bit out of place. First off it seems to mine as fast as hearthlings, which looks weird for its size.

Secondly, being too big, it looks weird when mining walls… :glum:

…and worse when mining tunnels :forlorn:

They literally won’t fit the tunnel they mine :jubilant:

But then again, just a minor grievance :3
I’d make them a bit smaller, personally - still taller than hearthlings, but not much.

That’s it!
Again, the Geomancer is GREAT! And I love the new landmarks! Good job :heart:

3 Likes

In the topic of geomancer bugs:
The terrain blocks (or at least the rock terrain block stone) are placed at a slightly different location than the ghost is placed (seems to be a 1,1 offset):

Location clicked and placed ghost (1,1 offset done on purpose):

Result after being built by geomancer (put together with other rock, offset gone):

Thanks for all the testing and reports!

Placing one of the terrain block stones on top of one of the boulders that spawn on terrain causes issues.

I could only reproduce it with the mimic stone or landmarks that have mimicking parts, because it tries to mimic the boulder material and it doesn’t have one. Fixed.

Perhaps it would be cool if the geomancer could also craft 1x1x1 terrain blocks

Ha! I had that in my initial implementation for those exact reasons, but folks on the team thought it was too finicky. I feel vindicated. :smiley: That said, we opted for the patch mechanism which is more powerful, so 1x1x1 is probably gonna have to be a mod. It’s trivial to mod in though. Just take the regular large blocks and reduce the size in the JSON.

Geomancer’s products appear as decorations on the Builder.

Definitely shouldn’t be there. Made them a separate category and not shown in the builder.

Grown terrain “overrides” stockpiles

Good catch! Fixed for both patches and landmarks/blocks. As a side effect, also fixed being able to place regular items to overlap stockpile/farm zones.

I love the golems! But… Their model might be a bit too big.

This one’s for @malley.

The terrain blocks (or at least the rock terrain block stone) are placed at a slightly different location than the ghost

Thanks! Fixed.

Doesn’t this mean it is impossible to make building templates utilising terrain-generating objects?

Correct. But if you tried to do it, it would have exploded in a wide variety of ways because these things change shape at runtime.

Right, I haven’t thought about that… One could cover in-progress building with stone blocks while the builders are inside.

silently activates MAD LINGOMANCER MODE (a.k.a. POOL LADDER SELLER MODE)

Happy to serve o7 I’ll definitely include it in ACE :joy:
Feels particularly useful for what we’re planning even if exclusively available to the Dwarves!

Thanks for the feedback - flagging @Allie to get eyes on - but previously we have been ok with this as it was an acquiescence. We wanted them to stand out in the world and look unique while also providing benefits that hearthlings do not. Originally we had wanted to have a golem “punch” the ground away in large chunks - but that ended up being too much work on the code side and would require new animations, so we settled on this look. Yes they end up moving very fast for their size which doesn’t feel great, but we felt that the benefits to the player outweighed the visual downsides. Shrug gotta make concessions sometimes : /. Personally I think hearthlings move too fast as well.
Due to their size, we did extend their reach substantially from that of hearthlings - so on top of not eating/sleeping, they will also (hopefully) stand in one place longer than a hearthling and spin about mining stones in a large area around them.

(They are also faster on the processor than having hearthlings, so all around good ; )).

2 Likes

I can live with most of it, yes :slight_smile:
Personally the only thing that bugs me slightly is their head clipping on tunnels - but I guess I can try forgetting that when I play in slab mode :smiley:

1 Like

They are one with the rock.

1 Like

Cricket Golem with a sense of fashion? :wink: I had plenty of worker outfits left but I think they’re a bit too big for the small Cricket Golems. Maybe they should be reserved for Hearthlings only. :slight_smile:

Out of curiosity, how big is the Cricket Golem (compared to a Hearthling), does it require the same amount of space or can it fit through smaller areas?

I’m having another mad science moment, but the whole idea hinges on whether the crickets can fit into spaces too small for hearthlings – basically, I want to restrict certain hauling routes to crickets only. Given that the miner golems still have a hearthling-sized hitbox, I half expect that crickets will be the same; but I’m crossing my fingers that they’re just one block shorter.

2 Likes

Can quickly test it out with debug tools :smiley: I would but currently can’t get in game :forlorn:

Visually without the glowing feelers maybe 1 Block. But I think the Cricket golem is a cloned worker restricted to haul only. That’s the reason they put on worker outfits you have in Storage. So at the moment the Hitbox is the same as of an Hearthling at the moment i guess. But I’ll test it later.

Not sure if I need to make a new thread or add it here but the new items that the geomancer requires to craft golems (Golem Parts, Golem Pick, Golem Backpack, and Hearth Essence) will only be placed in stockpiles and chests if the ALL category is checked, they currently seem to have no category otherwise.

(Also if the crickets get to be made only 1 tile tall I would LOVE that, all the neat cleaner golem routes that could be made!)

In regards to the cricket golem, it does not have a “cower” emotion, so instead of cowering you get a flashy error.

2ndly, again regarding animations - bunny’s who are turned into geomancers does not have the animation for swinging the scepter in the Geomancer fashion and instead skips it entirely and just finishes immediately when placing a landmark or a terrain block.

This also led to my bunny geomancer being unable to use the work benches due to the animation just plain missing.

And lastly, the placement of Landmarks are considered a “haul” task despite Geomancers being the only ones able to place them.

This is a really cool idea, but unfortunately won’t work out of the box. The crickets have no collision, but pathfinding and reachability assumes hearthling-sized restockers. One could mod in custom AI logic for them to do this, but it would not be simple, and has performance implications.

he new items that the geomancer requires to craft golems (Golem Parts, Golem Pick, Golem Backpack, and Hearth Essence) will only be placed in stockpiles and chests if the ALL category is checked, they currently seem to have no category otherwise.

Fixed in the next release.

In regards to the cricket golem, it does not have a “cower” emotion

Fixed in the next release.

This also led to my bunny geomancer being unable to use the work benches due to the animation just plain missing.

Being fixed, hopefully in time for the next release.

And lastly, the placement of Landmarks are considered a “haul” task despite Geomancers being the only ones able to place them.

An unfortunate side effect of the current implementation, but unlikely to be fixed for 1.0.

1 Like