Desktop Tuesday: Complex Rooms

It doesn’t matter whether I know programming or not. I’m the person that’s going to be using the product, and I’m voicing my concerns. A little understanding towards what the players want would go father than me sitting back and just agreeing with whatever the developers want.

I want to ask you to go back and read what I’ve said, in full. Because if the devs had guessed what I was going to talk about, then two of the developers wouldn’t be contradicting each other, especially two leads.

On top of that, if they already know what we’re going to say, then why would they even care to be part of these discussions? That’s wasted time they could be putting into the product.

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I mean you can respond in any way you want. just saying good luck with that, as I’ve mentioned you already gave them your money lol
if you have ever done any long term modding or projects involving computer sciences I think you would be more understanding, which is why I asked about the programming.
we both have had some of the same ideas and criticisms so I don’t really know how I’m agreeing with them
devs like feedback, as do investors, but they can’t make official statements on things that they do not want to advertise as a future feature, (they hinted at this a few posts back) especially if they haven’t consulted every member of the dev team and checked all the boxes. one person does not code the entirety of stonehearth
anyway I feel like we are just talking in circles now. I may have come across as upset is because I was so exited for this building editor preview and just want it to be polished slightly and released in an experimental build soon. sorry if I seems like I was trying to invalidate your posts or something, that was not my intention at all.

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I’d suggest that it’s only those who are generally supportive who will bother to hang around on a product’s forum.

I’ve tried bashing my head against a brick wall here on the subject of Linux/macOS versions. I gave up as it was clearly a waste of time. I can’t give any meaningful feedback on the mechanics of the game as the last alpha I played was 19.

My observation is that clearly, by their own judgement, the original development team got it almost entirely wrong. As a KickStarter backer, that taught me a lesson. Those who are on their first ‘game’ product are likely to be on a very long learning curve.

Other KS projects, as well as this one, have also convinced me that I should never back any project that has macOS as a stretch goal.

So, all in all, a learning experience for everyone :grinning:

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well in all fairness ports usually come later as it literally multiplies the workload when the game code has to be updated on multiple platforms or languages. that said, they probably could have been more clear that only at the end will it be available in a different OS, but not during the alpha.

really the original devs simply dreamed small and the new team is dreaming much bigger :merry: the result is some delay and lot of work. just glad we are finally starting to see the new team get a handle on things

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I agree. I think the original devs threw the kitchen sink into the Kickstarter to get the ball rolling and didn’t really realize the potential the game had and that some of what they promised would be in conflict with that potential. During the development process they realized just having a soulless city builder doesn’t matter if the hearthlings have no life and changed directions. I’m glad they’re growing and accomplishing bigger and better things than they would have been able to otherwise. Regardless, I’m still very much excited about the game.

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That’s a rather cynical view on things.
The thing is, people are not telepaths. Time and again I’ve seen people saying that “voting with your money” is the only way to make a company change something.
That is not the case.
If you do not voice your concerns but just silently “vote with your money”, nothing’s gonna improve. Criticizing is crucial.

Part of it was what Nikki and sdee described as “Stonehearth visual style”. That’s what Allie as a visual designer defines. Nikki and sdee make this vision into the game, through coding and particular design decisions, so I guess we should address questions about implementations to them.

[quote=“SirAstrix, post:58, topic:31900”]
This would be true…if there weren’t an undo button, to begin with. The undo button does work some times, especially with Auto-Save turned off. So the code is already there and functions. It just has a senior moment ever once in a while. That’s why I say fixing it shouldn’t be that big of an issue.[/quote]

I’ve noticed it doesn’t work for operations on some of the entire prototypes. For example,
if I remember correctly, while it can “undo” adding a roof, it can never “undo” a “raise walls” operation. And for some operations, it works sometimes. For me, that’s a hint that while some functionality is simply bugged, a whole subset of operations is currently not supported - supposedly because adding this support would involve too much “dirty fixes”.
Note that without seeing the code I can only assume the state of things. I may be wrong. It may be better, it may be worse.

I was talking about the building editor, not the whole game. They themselves state in the DT that it’s very much a WIP.

[quote=“SirAstrix, post:58, topic:31900”]
This is the indecisiveness I’m talking about being shown on this forum. I understand this editor isn’t 100% in stone and could change, at the same time, this editor has been in the works (according to y’all) for how many months, and yet this late into it, lack of communication and planning is being shown.
[/quote] As much as I understand, the work on it actively started after the last stable Alpha. So it’s… what, two months?

This, however, is a very valid point. I may understand the hesitance to voice big decisions, bit that looks like the good moment to do it. As @Brackhar noted, with direct dev communication such misunderstandings can happen, but in this particular case you can easily sort them out.
So yes, I’d like to hear what the team’s actual stance on the case is.

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To be fair it was made clear that the macOS and Linux versions wouldn’t come until beta, what wasn’t made clear was that StoneHearth would apparently be in perpetual alpha.

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agreed and well said. I doubt the answer to the first question is going to be “no”, that is why I’m not voicing any concerns. (I just don’t think that will be an issue). But when it does actually happen, I will be here voicing criticsm.

Same thing with seasons and festivals. I think were just not there yet to, in a building methafor I once posted here, start making the walls of the second floor (dimensionalising content). First we need to make a blueprint for the first floor, and put all the parts and cuurent walls/rooms (current content/systems) in place, so it is functional and fun. But I expect that the second floor will be added at some point.
TBH, I have voiced concerns over game direction on this front, in this thread about the current unbalance in timescales. Since the festivals and seasons aren’t here yet, I leave it at rest, but I will dig it back up when appropriate.

@Rabid_Llama did however have an idea for PvP, in the form of (PvE)v(PvE), where both players try to survive the longest with their town, but need to cooperate in order not to lose. I am really interested in that idea, and I think it is a good thing if they go that direction next to the Co-Op direction. (Feedback for @Radiant)

Ohh, that kind of PvP (PvP combat). Also, good point, can’t argue about that.

Can’t argue about this either. These are valid points you raise here.

[quote=“SirAstrix, post:54, topic:31900”]
So as it currently stands, almost HALF of everything I put my money towards has been thrown out the window for a dozen different reasons, and that list keeps growing. And yet I’m expected to be happy about that, because “change can be good”. This is why I say it’s becoming a different game that I didn’t back. [/quote]
Given your examples I understand what you mean and why you are frustrated now. I wasn’t there at the time of the kikstarter, so I might have an entirely different outlook on the game, where certain things just aren’t as obvious as they are to you. Nevertheless thank you for taking the time to explain your frustrations to me, that really helped me understand it. :slightly_smiling_face:


If you do it in the way you did just then, I will not be thinking this. But before, the main tone I got out of it was frustration and a general “here we go again, they’re doing it again” vibe, which (sorry) weren’t always that explainative of your frustration as that reply was. (Although me not knowing your frustration helped in that).


As far as the RTS, Sandbox and RPG combi goes. I do not believe limitations necessarily go against sandbox. A prime example of this is Kerbal Space Program, where you can build any spacecraft/rocket/boat/whatever-you-can-think-of, as long as it obeys the laws of physics. It is OK, as long as players know that overcoming the limitations is part of the game, and that is where real time strategy comes in. Now I may have a different (less combat oriented) view of RTS, but the consequence of having all kinds of systems intricately connected to one-another (including that hearthlings like certain things more than others) is that everything is emergent, and that, thus, you need to come up with different strategies every time to slay the enemies that are those systems (including, but not limited to enemies).
In that view, the current direction still looks to be on that same path, but you may disagree of course :slightly_smiling_face:.


This partially depends on what prototype the dev’s will go with. If it is the first, then your statement about the six different overlapping rooms is valid, and that is yet another reason why I think (feedback for @Radiant) that that prototype is not a good direction to go into. But if it is the prototype that is shown in the DT, then your point is not valid. As soon as you drag one on top of the other, the rooms merge, and you will have a cross-shaped room. Doing it more often will leave you with a perfectly fine round room, and the game has no problem with it.
Your point about the amount of work still applies.


Then lets talk about the ‘nonconventional’ buildings, which have pixalated, curved (as opposed to smooth curved which isn’t going to be in game) walls. Let’s find a way to make the process of setting up non-square rooms as easy or easier than before.

  1. Currently, to make a round room, you build both the floorplan and the walls. First you need to draw out the entire floorplan, and then the game manually puts walls on top.
    If instead we can create walls, and then the game adds the floor in automatically, that would in theory be no different from the current system, provided that you can make the floorplan in the same way with walls as you could previously with floors, and provided that it is as easy or easier to design a floorplan with walls than it is with floors.
  • the wall tool is in essence no different from the floor tool, except that now, we immediately get walls around our floors. If this annoying, I’d advocate that we add a visibilty option in the editor that takes down the walls temporarily, while you are designing the floorplan.
  • but this still leaves out an essential part of the old system, which is click and add. Here you could click on a voxel next to the current floorplan, and add it. This is very useful for planning out nonconventionally shaped buildings. Because of this, I’d advocate for that functionality being ported over as well, like this:
  • leave the free standing room in place, if you need it for inner walls.

Name it if I missed something.


I certainly hope so, I would love the fisherman class in the game. I really do hope that @Brackhar and @Rabid_Llama will look at mods with consideration of them going in game. Especially now that lots of people will make mods with content, while the dev’s are revistiting core systems. That is an oppertunity to see how things could be, how certain things impact the game if it were stock, and I believe the devs should take such oppertunities.

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I agree we’re not to a point that it should be added. At the same time, and I may be wrong, I feel festivals has turned into a “we might add that”. I do know from one of the dev streams (find it later if you want me to) that Seasons has been pulled off the immediate table, and has been put on the wish list.

I appreciate you pointing this out to me, and I’ll work on being more direct in the future. I can sell salt to a snail, but when it comes to getting one of my points across, I take a hit to charisma big time.

Looking at JUST the RTS part, and not what goes into it, then I would agree with you that it’s still there. But when I look at it, and see that we’ve lost PvP Raids, lost our kingdom for a small town, and a couple other things, then I feel the RTS is being taken out of it.

RTS can be defined multiple ways, which by one of those definitions, how the game is right now could be called an RTS as you have to Real Time Strategize against Ogo. I wanted to see more. I wanted basically what’s said in this post.

I would love this. If it were this easy to draw angles / circles, It’d make my life of a city builder easier, which I know would then make @MelOzone happy. Until we get a response from the devs on this though, I’ll keep my reserve.

Just picking on you, @MelOzone.

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Nikki owns the design of the builder, and she pulls me in as appropriate. We’ve discussed broad directional goals, and I trust she’ll create something awesome. I do not and will not operate by requiring all design decisions, big and small, to go through me. That’s bad leadership, and frankly, bad for the product; Nikki is drastically better suited to this problem than me.

We default to trust in our team, and Nikki has shown me at every turn that that trust is warranted. I have full confidence in the direction she is taking the builder, and we sync up regularly to make sure that exploration continues to fit into the broader picture.

There are some legal issues here that I don’t have a full understanding of, so I’m not really able to speak to this. Sorry!

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Understood.

[quote=“Brackhar, post:56, topic:31900”]
Now, in reference to whole walls that are rounded in aggregate, but still made out of individual cube voxels that are orthogonally aligned (like in the image you linked), that’s a different matter. Nikki and I haven’t discussed that pattern in depth as of yet.[/quote]

Please keep us updated. Maybe it can be included in the next DT :merry:

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yeah I don’t see why this would be much of an issue as blocks are just blocks
this is done easily in another alpha game, software inc, and its probably more complicated as the visuals have to be updated after the change is made.

I think the only variable you would need to know is how tall the wall is, and of course what material and color the blocks are. are they different or do they merge with the existing wall? questions like that. in software inc you can set a default building scheme. maybe something like this would be necessary when working for different styles or theme of buildings in stonehearth so that you do not have to choose every single time you want to make an edit.

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This still leaves the question unanswered but does say that we need to be communicating with @Sweet about these thoughts / issues rather than yourself. Is there a reason we haven’t heard from her, or should we just use her original answer…as the answer to the question?

Remember it’s the weekend! I’m sure she has other things to do as well. :slight_smile:

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Fair enough. At the same time, this conversation has been going on for half a week, and we haven’t heard from her except in the beginning.

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after thinking about this some more. this idea works fine for editing a building that doesn’t exist, but editing one and extending the wall onto a building that was already made would be a bit more challenging to figure out what section of the roof or second story should be taken out and extended. would the entire roof need to be taken off and re-centered because thats the style of roofing on that particular building? etc. sure this could be solved but it would probably be best done with a lot of prompts from the user about design choices.

You can do that in game currently, and my thought was that if you ported over all functionality of the old floor tool, then making a room of any size and shape would be no different than in the old system. Some of the old fuctionality included click and add, as supposed to click and drag, so I wanted to put emphasys on this detail as well: that it is important that we can make (or rather, add) 1x1 rooms or 1xn rooms to other floorplans, with merging.

I think for second stories, you’d have to manually do it again for the second floor. This requires that I can start dragging a room from the side of the foundation, rather than from the top of the ground (cuz there is none). The roof though, I don’t quite know what to do with that.

maybe this visual will help you understand what I was talking about
I simply want this house to be 1 block wider, because reasons.




so as you were saying

true. but this only works for single blocks.
my concern was with editing an existing design without having to rebuild the entire room, but just replace the wall, extend the floors, and adjust the roof by merging them.
right now its not even possible to make a good example, because you cannot build a wall on thin air for the overhang of this building. I forgot to add the 1 block layer of floor before placing the wall.

alternatively you could allow the player to select the entire room and adjust the width/length of the floorplan to move the walls, and center the new design on the one or two walls that they do not want to be rebuilt., but they game would have to do a comparison between the two and merge them. this means you would have the player cut the design along an axis where the extension could be made in a parallel direction

the problem this comes with again is patterns on walls and floors that will either have to all be replaced along the seam where the axis was cut, or just do a visual update to save the player some time. really depends on how realistic you want to be about the colors of single blocks being a real thing in the world.

Hey everyone! Thank you all for the good discussion and most of all, thank you to everyone who went out of your way to really listen, communicate, and understand each other when you had a disagreement. It’s one of the reasons our community gives our team strength to keep going even when the bugs are everywhere and making the game gets difficult. :slight_smile:

Ok, so when a thread gets to a certain length before I’ve managed to take a look it gets difficult to respond to specific topics or use quotes, so I’m going to do my best to summarize the topics I’ve seen here, and either address them if I can, or describe how to unwedge us going forward:

Q: I’m worried this new building editor won’t allow me to make a cool structure I have in my mind, or that I was able to make in the old editor. Will it?
A: Nikki (@sweet) and Chris (@not_owen_wilson) have a goal with the new editor/infrastructure, and it is to allow you to build anything you want. They’ve gone to great lengths to preserve the flexibility of the tool to that end, and to the best of my knowledge, it should really be able to build anything. If you’re worried there’s a structure that you will NOT be able to build in the new building editor when it is complete, the best way to make sure we account for your style is to send Nikki or Chris a picture of what you have in mind, so they can consider it in their mental model. If you want to do this, start a new thread, because this one is super long and it’s easy for stuff to get lost, even if you call out someone explicitly.

That said, the prototype you see in the Desktop Tuesday is just part of the complete editor, and lots of things are still missing. So please don’t use the prototype to judge the whole experience–just the specific questions that this prototype is answering.

Q: I’m worried that the new building editor will make it harder (than the existing editor) to make the things I like. For example, the stuff I want to make may take more clicks. Will this be true?
This is a fair concern! The new building editor optimizes towards things that fall into SH’s visual aesthetic, like the templates you see Allie make, or the castle on the initial KS poster, or the basilica that Kythandra made that Chris uses for his performance test. If you really like building things that are outside this aesthetic, there’s a chance the new editor may make your thing harder to build. If you want us to consider your aesthetic, again send us a template of something you’d like us to vet the UX experience of the builder against, and again, we’ll see what we can do. However, there’s a chance we may still optimize away from your style, in favor of the style that belongs to the game. We think this is a better choice for SH overall, so that the game can continue to build its identity and help you feel like your work belongs in its world.

Q: I would like clarity from a team member about how they or your team work, but I haven’t yet gotten it. / I’m asking some question you’re not answering!
A: I encourage everyone on the team to check discourse, but our first priority is to make the game, and our second priority is to talk about it. If you’d like an answer and you haven’t gotten a response in a thread, do everything you can to make it easy for that person to respond: PM them directly, or start a new thread, or ping a second person. Also, it helps to be really positive, and not, say, call them out on their competence, even if you think it’s justified ;). If it’s emotionally exhausting to write a reply because it looks to them like you’re attacking them, it’s going to take longer to write that reply, and like I said, they have a game to make. :slight_smile:

If you’ve tried everything and they haven’t gotten back to you, then it’s because they’re swamped with all the tasks they’ve signed up to do that day, or that week.

Q: This feature (fill in the blank–in this case, building) shows how SH has deviated from its original Kickstarter goals and I feel angry/betrayed/like I wasted my money.
A: This topic is too big for this thread. If you really want to discuss it, PM me or make a new thread! In the meantime, here’s a small answer: When we did the pivot last fall, and again when I made the January 2017 post and again when I updated the roadmap, I explained that the game we were originally making was not working out for us, and that following our original plan was leading us to a flat, uninteresting player experience. In order to do what we really wanted, which was to make a great game, we had to embrace a fundamental pivot, and honestly, a narrowing of scope. If you look at the Kickstarter, we trying to make a Sandbox City Building RPG and RTS in the vein of Dwarf Fortress. That’s… 5 genres! We weren’t succeeding because it probably isn’t possible to make a GOOD game that includes all of 5 different genres. So we had to pick. So we looked really hard at what we felt the spirit of SH was, and we decided that we would make a community building game: a game focused on a small group of people who must optimize their environment to survive. This means: something like Rimworld/Dwarf Fortress but with polished, deep systems built for engaging gameplay, not just storytelling, and infused with a tone of warmth, heroism and mystery. If this is not what you signed up for, I apologize. It isn’t what I signed up for either! But when you’re failing, you have to take a strong look at what you’re doing, and change, or you will just keep failing.

Does this mean that we’re not going to fulfill all our Kickstarter promises? We’re going to try! Almost everything that we promised, I believe, is still on the roadmap, and multiplayer is coming too. Even seasons and festivals are on there. But we pivoted from feature development to goal-driven development and so if it’s a feature that doesn’t get us closer to our goals, which is to make a great game, then yes, we will cut it. For example, async PVP raids? Nope. Isn’t core to Stonehearth, doesn’t make this more like what we want. Is there anything else we’re sure won’t make it? Well, pirates/ninjas/politicians are a bit off tone. I’m really fond of them–I made them up in the first place–but we’ll see if they, in the end, contribute to warmth/heroism/mystery, or if we need something better. If in the end, they do not, then we should remove them. But personally, I kind of hope they’ll still make it.

Q: But… I’ve always wanted really big cities!
A: If you’re a Kickstarter backer, do you remember how we had a pizza party right at the end of our Kickstarter? Way back then, we talked about how the max size for SH’s towns was going to be about 50. This is all Tony ever planned for when he was creating the AI system. This number hasn’t changed, and you can do this now via user settings. Maybe if we super optimize, and are really, really lucky, and computers get faster, we could do maybe 200, but I’d consider that a stretch goal that we’re not actively pursuing. If this doesn’t fit your vision for a city-builder, again, apologies, clearly somewhere we got crossed wires.

Q: I don’t know where this game is going! Please share your design vision!
A: Back at the beginning of the year, I stated our mission in the Desktop Tuesday from January 10th: DT: State of SH, 2017! – Stonehearth We’re updating it as we go which is why in the answer above, I specifically compare it to Rimworld/DwarfFortress. I’m not sure how to be more specific, since we’re very much discovering where we’re going together, but if you have a specific question, like will X be in the game, feel free to ask, and we’ll tell you what we know, even when that answer is “we haven’t thought much about it yet.”

Q: I feel like you’re withholding something from us.
A: Maybe I should clarify something! In February of 2016, I became Stonehearth’s Team Captain/Product Owner, in lieu of Tom, who had to move on to a higher-level role at the studio. In this role, is it my job not to dictate the details of what goes into the game, but to make sure that we have a clear vision, that the team has the resources and space and time needed to execute on that vision, to resolve any conflicts that appear, and let everyone know where we are and what we’re doing. I know more about Stonehearth’s high level vision right now than maybe anyone in the world, though all domain specific details–design, ux, engineering, modding–belong to their respective experts. I tell you pretty much everything I know. If there’s something I do not know, I tell you that too; there’s a lot of things I don’t know! The best I can do in that situation is point a bunch of brilliant and passionate people at the problem–including all of you, as our resourceful community–and unblock you all in any way I can.

It’s possible you might be more comfortable knowing the game had a known shape that could be described end to end by its vision holder. That may someday be true of our game, but through hard trial and error, we’ve discovered that we’re just not there yet. We are exploring an unknown territory together, and that requires courage and faith, as well as skill and determination. I have faith, for example, that you’re the best community ever to have graced a video game. :slight_smile: You’re smart and thoughtful and you care deeply and our team respects that. So keep suggesting how to make the game better, and we will keep making that game for and with you.

I’m locking this thread because it’s gone all over the place and the discussion is getting hard to follow–not because I want to stop having this discussion. If I’ve missed a theme, or if you want to talk about a specific point, please make a new thread with a specific topic or PM me directly. All my days are now dense with meetings and my inbox is a train wreck, but I’ll do my best to get back to you when I can. :slight_smile:

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