I get ya, i really do. It would be awesome if there was a full 3d art style dwarf fortress that was fully completed in the style of stonehearth or similar.
But there’s so many trade-offs with graphics and development, and the fact that Dwarf Fortress has been in development for a decade or so.
There’s a reason games like timber and stone and towns were abandoned (though i don’t agree that they should have been), the sheer SCOPE of a game like that is ridiculous, and I feel pretty lucky Stonehearth has come as far as it has, even with the limitation they were forced to put on it.
I hope the game you dream of comes out, I promise i’ll be playing it right along with ya.
Probably because the problems that arose were harder than expected. And limited (Kickstarter) budget means limited time to tackle a problem so when you realize that one solution won’t exactly work as planned it burns money without getting you anywhere really, which seems to be the case for the builder. Then there’s the whole engine that was written from scratch. It would probably be too much work (i. e. too expensive) to make it support open world streaming like Minecraft because it wasn’t built with that in mind.
that’s one of the reasons why I dont understand why this game was made on its own custom engine…
Even after some development… was it not worth it to port it to another engine? unity? that would make ports to other platforms much quicker and easier to do alltogether
Porting stuff to an engine from a third party is no easy task. The reason you write an engine from scratch is because you can build it to fit your exact needs. And porting is not like you just copy some lines of code and paste them into a Unity API. Making an own engine probably seemed cheaper, too, since you won’t have to pay any licensing fees in the long run. There’s myriads of decisions and every solution has pros and cons so you have to take the route that seems the most promising. Reality isn’t always plannable, though.
I cannot believe that after all of everything, you’d suggest giving us more money. That’s really sweet; thank you.
We did a serious estimate on a port to Unity or Unreal in early 2017 because both engines have a lot more tools and it came out to 2 years with no new content and no updates. That said, it still might not have solved our performance problems; there are lots of issues with voxel performance at massive scale in Unity. They may have been solvable, but it seemed better to keep going than basically start over.
Also: the prototype with different biomes was indeed very cool, but the pathfinding perf problems made it really hard to play for more than an hour at a time. Of equal concern was the fact that it dramatically changed the tone of play: everyone was suddenly really into footmen and clearing the map, and less into building towns. It would be a good game, if we pivoted to make that game, but it wasn’t the game we were currently building.
you have made it THIS far, its just… knowing that about 30% of the work is more or less done (models, random world generation, the builder) makes me hope there is more.
I hope someday stonehearth becomes the game we all want to play, im just so sad it wont be for the forseable future.
If Bruno supremo’s mod works properly, I think I can hold on for a little longer.
I know, right?! I kid you not, when @not_owen_wilson started on SH a few months after the Kickstarter, Tony literally said to him “ok, the game is 80% done. We just need to do the last 20% that’s actually 80% of the work.”
I think the appeal of simulation games, and why Dwarf Fortress’s creators say that the game is their life’s work, is that you really could add stuff indefinitely. As a business model, it can work, but probably at a smaller scale than 14 dedicated people.
I don’t believe any of these were ever a part of the roadmap.
It’s funny you say that. Right now, I really am undergoing feelings similar to what I get during a breakup. A vague feeling of betrayal, coloured by the realization that this feeling comes entirely from my own expectations, and not any true broken promises. I knew what I was getting into when I backed SH. I hoped for a certain kind of game, and as the days wear on, I am understanding that SH is goose-stepping away from the vision I had put my money behind.
But whom can I possibly be mad at here? This crap I’m writing, this is just me, some dude with 200 hours in SH and some modding experience. How do you guys think people who spent thousands of hours of their lives on this project feel? Yall think they write updates like these, thinking, “god, we just can’t wait to piss off every one of our fans”? Yall think they go to their scrum and say, “SO GUYS, what features are we gonna cut today? Let’s go after something nice and looked-forward-to, so we get the maximum salt per update.”? I’ve had passionate, even angry arguments about freaking business software that I write. Here, not only are we talking about not a business software, but an emotional-connection-building game, but also, we’re adding us, the fans, into the mix. Yall think these decisions were easy?
I’m sad. I’m really freaking upset by this news, in fact. But I don’t think this decision was made in bad spirit, it’s the best thing they can do without fast tracking the game to a shitty half-done release. Hopefully, they will be able to make the final release nice and flashy enough to attract more modders, and the game will continue to grow.
Just hope you guys manage to finish this. I don’t really have anything else to say. Goodspeed you guys.
Pirates, politicians, and ninjas were a Kickstarter stretch goal. Some of the stretch goals have been done already, and it seems like others probably aren’t going to happen ever, so who knows?
I am sorry when I WAS angry. I legitimatly was. I am still a little bit upset.
and I can deal with this level of “upset-ness”
we may not have 100% everything we ever want in life, I need to understand and accept this.
since I love quoting the kickstarter so much
Blockquote We LOVE mods and want to make it as easy as possible to author and share mods. As a modder you’ll be able to do basically anything that we as developers can do: introduce new items and monsters, write new scripted adventures, influence the AI, you name it.
I think there is still a bit of hope. There is more, its just to be made
I’m very ok with the map being the size that it is. I’m very ok with re-embarkation and founding a new outpost. Just… let me know my previous towns are still out there… I don’t need to have them on the same world map. I don’t need to see them on the horizon. All I want, is some rather bland notifications that would give me an opportunity to have any sort of interaction. A trader will come and bring some goods… A hearthling that visited the old town and heard of us came to join outside the daily update… Or there could even be an option of calling the old army for help in defeating an enemy on the map…
You gave me living people in an organic world where pets die of old age and seeds fall from cut down trees. You gave my people needs and aspirations. You gave us the ability to spread and create further in distant lands… I want all my towns to live and breathe, even if it’s going to mean there would be a few flags and quests updating every now and then if I decide to revisit some of my old towns in the old saves. I want my hearthlings to say goodbye and hello to their hometown, not farewell.
Hmm… I’m not so sure that’s true. I have a thought on how it might be doable, but my answer depends on Max’s answer to my initial question first. So, stay tuned.
Yes. If we just keep “memories” of the town, that’s pretty reasonable to add to the current re-embarkation system (and can even be modded in). So stuff like traders visiting from your old town, or e.g. receiving shipments of coal if you finish some coal trading quest in a previous city are not a huge amount of work. It’s not highest priority for us right now though.
That’s really sweet; thank you.