http://www.stonehearth.net/desktop-tuesday-2018-update/
I’m woefully behind in updating the roadmap, which I will attempt to do later this week, but before we go, let me schedule some dates for our next couple Europe streams:
Wed Feb 7th
Wed May 9th
Other Announcements
Streams start up again this Thursday at 6:00pm PST on www.twitch.tv/stonehearth.
Excited for the 2018 docket! This is going to be a great year!
And to get the building revamp in late Q1 as part of A24? Glorious way to kick it off.
Man, if this goes anywhere close to the way they say… 2018 will be a fantastic year for Stonehearth. I’m stoked!
Edit: @Stoneheartfan is there an actual link on your post to the DT?
There was originally, it disappeared lol, I’ve edited it back in, thanks for mentioning it 
I really need to get the new animations so I can update what I have to this new format.
And multiplayer at a25? That would be impressive.
I Saw it! Scaling in animation works now? in the New animation you can see their faces change(Mainly their eyes) Though, i though we were avoiding angles?
i hope my examples had some use here (heheheh, i’m all giddy)
Oh, and also i’m not dead, I Visit the SH Discourse Every day, it’s just that i never really posted anything recently, i’v finally been free of all the University stuff and’v been binging on a bunch of games as a break. i will be truely back soon though, i still have things unfinished here.
i touched on some of these subects recently in like 2-3 of my newer posts on here which give some of my thoughts and me and some of the people had some ideas in the comments but i didnt wanna copy paste them here for spam reasons but im excited
Great news in this DT And what a great build in the video (Even though the shifting and turning camera on high speed made me nacious 
) Who made that build?
When the new buildingsystem gets released, i will come back and dedicate some time to SH 
Thank you.
The hearthlings… T-They blinked!!!
faints 
Please press the rescue button for immediate herbalist treatment, thank you.
rescue cats engaged, swarm enroute
Totally missed this the first time I watched. Very expressive, should add a lot to the conversation system. 
Well that is one way to turn a mining pit into a town. 
All good to hear, so forward and onward to the future…! 
@Hyrule_Symbol your facial animations inspired @malley who went nuts with them and scaling and a WHOLE BUNCH OF OTHER ANIMATIONS over winter break. More on this in a future DT, and on the next release to unstable.
Also, glad you liked the town; I wanted to make a stepwell actually, but then ran out of time to do an elaborate water structure. Maybe next time!
Turned out great! I love how it shows a completely different style of town from the norm, should you wish to go that route. Flexibility ftw.
I really liked the dug-out town design, great aesthetics and functionality both, nice work there. Overall been very happy with the progress last year and looking forward to the new relaid foundations.
Am I correctly reading between the lines that once multiplayer, new building system, and “more content + endgame titan-like challenge” are in place, the game will be approximately “released,” or at least no longer in alpha?
If so. . I’d suggest three additional systemic additions before everything gets tied up with a bow:
Destructability of buildings. Figure out a way to let buildings take damage from attacks. I don’t know if this should be voxel by voxel or just “building collapses after X damage taken,” i don’t know if it should require seige engines or special monsters or what, but Titans are not gonna be threatening if they can’t destroy your cool buildings, and multiplayer won’t be nearly as fun if you can’t burn down your friend’s thatched-roof cottages. This will mean needing to figure out a few other things – i.e., should hearthlings take falling damage, etc., should stone have different durability than wood, etc – but it will be worth it.
Flowing, functional water, i.e., rivers and streams and springs, and water that has gameplay effects – drowning, pushing, irrigation, etc. – and can be moved with pumps and so forth.
Combat could really use another pass. It’s not bad as such – it has a decently mindless mechanic right now – but there’s very little tactical depth to it and very little player choice is involved – all equipment choices are linear quality tiers, and all combat choices boil down to “blob the enemy blob harder than they blob you first.”
Y’all did good work in the past year adding gameplay depth but even with the new building system you won’t be quite there until there’s some risk of loss. Building by itself isn’t a game, it’s just design and artistry; there has to be a chance to lose the building, a need to protect and defend. This is why SimCity has disasters and so forth. You’ve done a good job of integrating the building system with the appeal and mood system via spaciousness and so forth, but it isn’t really integrated with the combat system, combat just sortof happens around the buildings.
Similarly, flowing water is great and all but right now it’s purely aesthetic; it isn’t tied into the other game systems at all; it’s pretty, but why is it in the game?
I’ve posted elsewhere about what I’d like to see from combat (mostly different meaningful weapon and gear choices, like you see in games like Battle Brothers) but anything that adds some strategic depth beyond “have more dudes, wearing the top tier gear you can craft” would be great. Get the combat system more integrated with the crafting system (different gear choices), maybe even with the building system (make positioning matter at least a little bit).
Good luck moving forward and I’m looking forward to what’s ahead. Thanks!
why am i the only one who cant seem to see these facial blinking animations in the video… 
Sounds like a plan.
So much YES.
Yay for @sdee being back from NY holidays.
Also, @Hieronymous made some very good points there. I was playing different iterations of Red Faction for the last few weeks (playing RF3 Guerilla right now), and I’m amazed by how fresh and rare structural integrity feels. Even now, almost 9 years after release, rare games can boast destructability of such level.
To reiterate water, some systems of the same level as Starbound or Terraria (or, ideally, Dig or Die) would be very cool. With tie-ins for possible mechanisms and game usage.
Scaling works! Though it was a HUGE pain to make a rig that allows it (and I haven’t gotten it to work on creatures yet, though I haven’t tried to fix all their problems yet either). As Stephanie said, thank you very much for your examples! They were a huge reason I was able to push forward and make these ; ).
FINALLY. Updated the roadmap. Sorry for the 7 month delay T___T
http://www.stonehearth.net/stonehearth-development-roadmap/
Update: so it turns out that when Tom “lost” the PSD to the original roadmap, forcing us to update the bars with the nudge tool and destroying the background image under the bars as we did so, that it was actually more time efficient than having the full PSD and updating all the little boxes the “correct” way with them all on separate layers and stuff. :sigh: #tomisthekingofefficiency
Update 2: Well, of course he never expected progress to go backwards, and anyway, destroying the base art of Allie’s new roadmap would be heartbreaking so on the whole this is probably better, unless you want timely roadmap updates. T______T
