http://www.stonehearth.net/dt-re-embarkation/
Other Announcements: This week, Max is streaming! He’s been working hard on a ton of stuff, including performance fixes. Ask him all your optimization questions. In addition, he’s super interested in enhancing everyone’s ability to mod the game, so if you’re a modder and you need a piece of functionality to make your life easier, consider bringing that to his attention as well.
That was a beautiful Desktop Tuesday. Thanks so much for the heartfelt and info filled message. It almost felt like a farewell message and that made me sad 
As always, keep up the good work, looking forward to seeing the tweaks and changes in the future.
As you said at the end of the video, @sdee, I too expect many opinions.
I began watching the video thinking it was just another feature, but I understand now that this is a big deal to the development porgress on stonehearth, as important decisions have been made about end game.
I expect lot’s of people dissappointed or worse with how a stonehearth’s playthrough ends, because people expected other things from it, but you’ve quite managed to convince me of your decisions, and gave a lot of insight into the deeper purpose of each part of twon progression.
I feel I know much better what stonehearth is for a game. This made me a little sad, but that was mainly the loss of the open-endedness of the entire question, which let me fill this in however I wanted too. Stonehearth was a game about a town, however you wanted to mold that, at least in my mind. With that gone, I had to accept that it is how it is. Nevertheless, it looks to be a solid backbone for the game.
So, are titans off the table now, even non-apocalyptic ones?
Edit: Well, the exact moment my heart broke was when I actually realized that the one feature I thought of as rather unnecessary and something I won’t bother with anyway is kind of going to be the endgame.
I think there is two kind of people: The builders and the combatants
Why don’t u guys create modes for both?
Cuz i’m the combatant one. I really want to defend my kingdom, to save everyone, to have a great empire and have the greatest warriors. I really like the tower defence style.
I honestly got disapointed when I knew the final purpose of the game, however I think u guys can gratify both sides.
Create a big empire is a challenge? Yes, but defend it is a challenge too.
(I really expect to have a way to defend your kingdom like siege games)
If one of the ned goals is to transfer from village to village accumulating bonuses and creating ever-more beautiful cities, revamping the load game screen to reflect this might be nice. Instead of ordering them by last saved, order them in a sort of family tree manner, clustering the save games based on others together (possibly with a nice graphical tree style) to strengthen the idea that it is a continuous journey instead of completely separate games. Having this tree-like style shown on a sketch of a map, with arrows between saves and locations to roughly correspond to the area might look even nicer, but would probably go too much to the kingdom focus and result in losing focus of the separate cities.
Not off the table.
That’s really really good to hear. Are there any other gameplay mechanics planned to have some kind of connection between old and new cities, even if it’s just messengers bringing stuff?
Not at the moment, but if we can find time for some easy wins that don’t involve keeping the actual old town around, we may do that.
I am going to be very critical
This is NOT how a game should end. (keep in mind, I am no game designer, I am no expert, I am just a player)
You NEED to increase the land of the game. if you dont, then you will run out of room, and you WILL tant to leave, not because you feel satisfied with your city, but becasue there is no more room to expand
The fact you have achieved the status of “city” should not be the end of the game, that should only mean you move on to a SECOND stage of gameplay, you are no longer a small group of settlers fighting for survival, you are now growing and expanding, your city will need more space, your citizens will have higher needs, these must be met to keep them happy, if you need more coal, you explore the landscape to find a coal mine and send it home, and if coal-loving goblins intercept your caravans, then why not enforce a solider wagon to accompany them on their journey? Bruno supremo made a mod that significantly increases map size, why not have it so maps can be increased IF your system can handle the load? why can dwarf fortress expand so much, even with limited graphics and a much more complex (everything) system that stonehearth? What if I DONT want a cutesy “happiness simulator” and want something with more semblance to real human interaction? Why do you think a town should ever be abandoned instead of expand to be better and larger? why would ANYONE just choose to leave if there is more to do? (why do people keep expanding their minecraft worlds, WHY does a game like banished or factorio have massive bases that are absolutely massive? you are limiting what the game is by not allowing the map to grow, the reason people are done with a city is BECAUSE there is nowhere else to go, not because they want to leave. If you were to explore the same area forever, without any chance of growing, you, too, would leave.)
With confidence, I can 100% assure you, allow maps to increase in size, and people will want to stay longer, you know why? because there is always more to do, there will ALWAYS be more goblin settlements to conquer, there will be more outposts to make.
The conversation system is too shallow. all it does is take time out of people’s day. I do not know if this is planned, but do people not speak to each other while they eat? while they work? do hearthlings not need free time instead of just talking every 2 hours?
whatever happened to ninjas, pirates and politicians? The dragons, the other planes? you once made a prototype of an expanding map and said you didn’t want to pursue that… WHY? that makes no sense, all youa re doing is limiting your game to a small square, and THAT is why people will get broed with the square after some time. If all you ever do is remain in your square of the world, you wil want to leave.
Why does minecraft have an infinte world generation system? why dont they just choose to limit the world size? moreso, why does ECO let you explore a WHOLE PLANET?
Because creativity games DO NOT BENEFIT FROM LAND LIMITS.
as long as you limit the size of the game area, all you are doing is saying “I will not move from this spot”, which limits ANY growth to those 4 corners, and will never expand.
What do you do when you run out of coal? when you run out of land for trees? does it not make sense to expand? Why can you at least increase land gradually? maybe small chunks at a time?
Play with bruno’s supremos large map mod. It 100% MAKES THE GAME FEEL LIKE A REAL EXPERIENCE, rather than a small toybox. Seeing your settlement far away, as a band of settlers or a lone waderer, makes the game gain perspective. Right now ive never gotten the skullbonker with the mod enabled, I wish I did, but i havent so far, even on hard.
THE GAME NEEDS AN EXPANDING WORLD! otherwise, it WILL come to an end. These types of games are mend to go on, and the game doesnt end in the traditional sense, it just keeps growing, and changing, and the world keeps expanmding, and if you want to move on to another land, that’s fine, but dont limit me on the size of my small chunk of land (if I have the ability to grow)
Again, this is the problem with stonehearth, it wants to be happy 100% of the time.
No
What good is success if faliure is never known? what significance does great accomplishment have if there is no chance of failiure? can hearthlings not hate each other? is it not a challenge to keep everyone happy and reasonably content?
You NEED to increase the land of the game. if you dont, then you will run out of room, and you WILL want to leave, not because you feel satisfied with your city, but becasue there is no more room to expand.
Will we ever get crosbows? like on the kickstarter promos? Whys is the end game “leave”? why is the main goal of the game to move on somewhere else? why isnt it to grow until you are tired of growing?
Also, why should I have to imagine the story of settlements? is a game’s purpose not to fullfill these dreams?
If giants maps dont work with eprformance reasons, why not fix them? what is the issue? do buildings not build properly? why not have a custom “Building blueprint designer” world where you can make pre-determined buildings if the world wont allow it?
Can you tell us what are the perfomance reasons behind the lack of expansion?
What can we give up to gain infinte or at leas, REASONABLE expansion within the world?
The prorotype with lots of map types was absolutly amazing, it was beautifull, why not have taht? taht seemed to work…
If you want a city builder, you NEED TO BUILD AND KEEP CITIES. a city needs to sustain itself, and taht is how we get civilization, a large group of cities coming together, to live in harmony.
Why not just make dwarf fortress in your art style in 3d? what is the point of removing the metagame?
large towns DO fit stonehearth, so do many smal outposts and travel between large cities. Why cant you be in control of many alrge settlements and have things happen between them, and decide how you will handle them?
Why not explain exactly what the game is then… if you want a city builder that does not grow… a society that is limited to a small area…
When you say “it frankly has been done elsewhere”. WE WANT TO SEE YOUR TAKE ON IT. Just becasue someone else did it DOES NOT MEAN YOU CANT GIVE IT A SHOT.
We love the art style of stonehearth. problem is… and I have no idea why… why are you limiting the game?
This just tells me that stonehearth HAS the potential.
I guess we wil just have to keep looking. We wanted a world to grow within with our citizens, not a plot of land to play with, and never leave from there.
What other games WILL fullfill this purpose?
Is there a game like timber and stone that was not abandoned, something to keep us hold on until stonehearth can grow more?
I’ve never seen anyone fill the entire map as of yet… If anyone can prove me wrong, you might have a point here.
Those who have played multiplayer with 8 people? Can anyone chime in if it feels cramped?
its not about filling in the entire map.
Its about having the sense of an open world. Its about having the ability to grow… its about knowing there IS MORE
there is land beyond the horizon, there are fields over those mountains, there is more to explore…
This corner of the world SHOULD NOT BE THE END, it should not even be the begining of the end.
It should be the end of the begining
It should only be the begining. Having a town should mean that you have the infrastructure to grow MORE and expand… and have mini settlements to get more resources… and fulfill the needs of your people, to make roads for trade, to find seas to travel, to send expeditions to, to make more houses, TO MAKE A KINGDOM
sadly, it seems that will never happen
Stonehearth just created their version of this for you, actually. That’s the point of the re-embarkation. To send an expedition to a new place, to make a new town, to make more houses?
To add on to the existing town.
Expeditions to eliminate the goblins that keep raiding my city, that keep murdering my cows, and keep destryiong the small towns of the refugees from the north, whose settlement I CAN REACH and escort safely to, without it being a text box
Thanks for the thoughts. In order to do this, though, we’d basically have to start over and make a new game 
Yeah it sounds fun. I agree, but I don’t think that’s the game stonehearth was ever going to be in the first place. At least not what the developers wanted.
I suggest dwarf fortress, i’m quite the fan (as my avatar suggests), it may fulfill all the things you listed or at least close.
When does the next kickstarter start?
Because it has limited graphics. And even with next to no graphics at all it doesn’t even have unlimited maps in fortress mode.
Because that’s a huuuuge undertaking. Which, I’m sure, was kind of the goal when the Cannons started the project back then. What works in a simplistic 2D world is infinitely more difficult in 3D. I think it’s safe to assume that most of the devs would’ve liked to implement lots of the mentioned features but there’s no time and money. We are lucky the project got this far tbh after development stalled because it turned out to be harder than they initially assumed. Doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed but I do see the harsh reality that seems to linger behind it all.
yes, but I wanted stonehearth’s art style for it. Ive looked into it, and most 3d mods look very weird for dwarf fortress
what happened with development? why did it ever stall?
