Hello all, I’m a fairly recent player of Stonehearth and I must say I’m enjoying the game quite a lot so far. Excellent work you guys have done!
So here are some issues I’ve come across that I couldn’t find in other threads (I admit I didn’t spend loads of time searching) that may need to get looked into:
Building - if I design a custom, erase some flooring for stairs, and issue the build order the hearthlings don’t want to start building even if they aren’t busy. I saved and reloaded and they began, but only dug out the first floor and left the rest. I’m using the free floor blocks to create stairs. I had success in the previous build when adding stairs after the building was built, but haven’t had a chance to try it in the new one yet.
Item placement - I was placing wooden fencing around an area and when I used the mouse wheel to zoom, it instead treated each click of the wheel rotation as a left click, and also placed down fencing on the same location (not stacked) for each click. The hearthlings continued to place the item in the same spot repeatedly and I was unable to undeploy or move them.
Hearthling spawn - I earned a new hearthling but it spawned stuck in the wall of a building. I built a ladder but he was really stuck.
Sounds effect - when transitioning from day to night and vice-versa, the effects played (owl hoot, rooster crow) cause a noticible frame rate dip for a second. My pc is not a gimp by any means, and I understand it’s alpha and optimization isn’t priority, but as short as the day/night cycles are this happens every few minutes and has caused multiple misclicks.
That is really all I can see being technical issues so far. I did have a question about the distance hearthlings are willing to go for things: is it related to the Will statistic? I can get them to go harvest something fairly far from the standard, but once the collect the initial blocks they don’t tend to go back for the rest.
Thanks again for the great game, and for taking a look at this thread.
Building - A stair tool is on the list to be done really soon. Not sure if it will be in the new version they hope to get over by the end of next week, but it’s planned. The issue you are getting with using the block tool to build the stairs as part of the original plan is sort of well known now, so hopefully they’ll do something to fix it shortly afterwards.
Hearthling spawn - Wow, that’s a new one to me. Normally hearthlings spawn far away from your banner (in fact on the edge of the zone you’ve already explored) so that they can’t get stuck. Is your camp somewhere really close to the edge of the map maybe?
Sounds effect - If you have auto-save on, it is probably saving at those times. That definitely causes a chunk of lag on my computer too.
I actually have autosave off because I feel it saves too frequently. I play mostly peaceful mode, so I tend to set it to high speed and it seems like it’s saving every two minutes.
As far as the guy spawning in the wall, I made camp in the lower third of the map, pretty far from the edge. I had two hearthlings spawn in the middle of camp, one right next to the standard, then this guy gets his head stuck in the roof.
Edit: I’ll post my specs when I go home from work this evening. I’m sure the performance dips are just alpha blues, I just thought it odd it was most prominent during the day/night cycle sound effect trigger.
Good additional info. I forgot how much extra work the game seems to do when day changes to night and back. I think part of it is turning on/off the night time lights (it gets really bad if you have like 20 braziers!), but it seems like there is more to it than that.
I think sometimes new hearthlings will also spawn inside your town too now that you mention it. They just normally seem to avoid walls. I guess in my games, the “explored area” is large so they are really unlikely to randomly spawn in a wall.
Some of the stuff is a few years old, I could stand a new CPU but I don’t have much trouble with most games. I don’t expect it to run super smooth as it’s still in alpha. Played around last night without issues, aside from lazy workers.
My best suggestion for the hearthling wall thing is to manually kill him/her (click them, press ~, type destroy). Since you met the requirements for that one, it tones it back and you will 100% get one the next day.
I’m not too concerned about the saves, I’m still coming to grips with the interface and the… “nuances” of getting things to work the way I like.
I’m starting to notice multiple hearthlings attempting the same tasks, such as placing an item down. For example, I was trying to hang curtains on a house, and two of the spuds decided they’d do it, both built a ladder in the same spot, then couldn’t hang the curtains at all, or remove the ladders to boot.
They also aren’t going about mining or building very logically, with a single block remaining and the nearest hearthling just standing around or walking away. I’m guessing because another one took the assignment. Proximity doesn’t seem like much of a priority for any task. I’ve noticed my carpenter walking across an entire stockpile of wood to grab a piece as far from his station as possible. I’m assuming there are plans to have tasks prioritized by when you order them.
I know I can use commands to get things done, but I don’t particularly want to unless absolutely necessary as I feel like that defeats the purpose of helping test, since we wouldn’t normally be using them in the game once it’s complete.