Dev Stream 315: Messing w/ the New Builder

Development
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Stonehearth Dev Stream 315: Messing w/ the New Builder

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/241771618
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@sdee, personally, I missed the stream tonight, but had a few thoughts on the new builder that I wanted to post.

  1. Where as I’m still getting used to how simple the new editor is, I feel with how long it is / how many icons it has, that it’d look better being vertically aligned on the left. On top of that, the color selector could then pop out for the selected icon rather than just at the end.

  2. You’d said moving it into the building into the ground is planned but not implamented. When can we look forward to seeing that?

  3. On the new builder, I’m not seeing the name of colors being shown like the old one. As someone who’s partially color blind, I really rely on that. Will that be added back?

  4. I completely agree with how the level system works, and think it should be left alone.

  5. I noticed when you were working on the second floor and then adding the roof, that the floor number in the builder was constantly off by one. Bug?

  6. Will the Place Item problem mentioned where you can’t use the place item menu to place objects in the building, be addressed in the future, or is this a “feature” from now on do to how complex it’s broken?

  7. Is there a way to delete / remove walls, or are we just going to rely on the remove voxel tool?

Sorry for the list of questions, but they’re thoughts I had while going back and re-watching this.

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Great stream! Cant wait to get a hold of the new builder, it will be a blast to see what it can do…

I know that the voxeltool is not really a thing yet, but since its my favourite, i would like to know how the transparity system will work with that? Will i be able to build a complete building ONLY with the slabtool, and still be able to look inside afterwards?

Regarding the townnames for NA. I come to think of these two endings (surfixes?)

Rod (Rød, meaning clearing of the forest. for exampel Birkerød means "we cleared this birchforest to build our settlement.)

Ing (refering to the god frey (ingwaz) and his prosperity) Ing is in many townnames and means tradinghub or prosperous town. They are ussually situated by water (trading by boats).

Thanks for a great stream.

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I enjoyed the stream, but what I took away from it is how far the new building system is from being ready for stable a24. I fear that either a24 will have to ship without the new building system or we’ll be waiting at least another couple of months.

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+1

Speculation: When the first complete version of the new builder is finished. In the stream, they repeatedly say that this version is finished when it is ‘up to parity’ with the old system, i.e. it can do exactly the same things as the old builder could. Putting houses in the ground was a feature of the old builder, thus it will be in the new one. On top of that, they mentioned that it was a thing that would be coming, as you have noticed.
So I guess your question is: when can we expect the first complete version of the new builder.

I think maybe the roof is another floor on it’s own, lik you know how you have these houses which have slanted walls on the top floor because those slanted walls are actually the roof.

Just curious: how long do you expect an alpha to take?

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Given the amount of work StoneHearth requires, progress at the rate of 1 or 2 alphas a year means a long, long wait for the game.

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I’m somewhat worried about this too, but she also mentioned that this building editor is far easier and faster to fix bugs for than the previous building editor. So perhaps it isn’t as far aways as it appears.

Edit: Also, I really enjoyed the stream, it’s good to get a glimpse into the future.

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Glad you guys enjoyed the stream! @not_owen_wilson, @jamiltron and @Sweet have been working incredibly hard on this stuff for a really long time now (especially Chris) so I’m really glad to be able to show off their hard work. I hope to do 2 slightly denser versions of it for upcoming Desktop Tuesdays as well, so that people can get the info in 3 minute chunks. :slight_smile: To answer some of @SirAstrix’s and others’ questions:

This makes sense if you’re going from a photoshop or qubicle model, as I certainly have, but after using it for a while, I think it makes sense on the bottom because the item cost panel (which Justin is still styling so we didn’t go into it in great detail yesterday) only vertically, and will actually live in that vertical, left-hand space if you have it open. Also, the bottom middle of the UI is where all the other main menu items are, so perhaps Nikki was trying to keep things consistent, and reduce mouse travel. Anyway, when it lands, give it a try and see how it feels in action.

It’s on the queue below “fix correctness bugs we don’t yet fully understand” so basically, after the rate of incoming “building won’t build bugs” abates. This is because at this point, we’d rather do understood work later than “what if this is actually a huge issue” work. Are you worried that without it, the editor isn’t worth using?

Yes, at the very least. It’s otherwise quite hard to match colors!

There’s a bug that causes interior walls to be counted as a “floor”. Again, part of a set of things that are less urgent than the building not building at all. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think Chris has fixed this as of yesterday. There were two code paths, and he didn’t update the second one, because like any good engineer, he assumed that the original writer (me) would have been better about making sure they were just one path. (Sorry Chris!)

Edit: Tested, and yes, you can use the X tool to remove whole walls, or whole rooms. However, to be more accurate, it deletes “whole units”. So if you put a room down using the room tool, the X will delete the whole room, not any one wall, because the room is remembered in the game as one thing. If you put a wall down with the wall tool, you can remove it with the X tool. If you want to remove part of a wall put down with the wall tool, or part of a wall in a room put down by the room tool, use the “cut holes” tool, to make sub-unit adjustments on the model.

I would personally like it to have voxel slab that you can designate as wall or roof, but again, waiting on parity with the old builder, meaning, fix a bunch of correctness stuff first.

Let’s just say that A24 will ship when the new builder is ready, and whatever else lands between now and then (Like the new town quests or the other encounter stuff that Luke/Allie/Malley/Max are working on) will become rolled into A24 as it becomes ready.

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Even if it’s not complete - complete, I was just curious about this specific “feature”. That said, I’ll delve into this deeper below in my answer to @sdee.

Even if that were the case, which from the looks it was, that still doesn’t change that when she was doing the first floor, it was on number 2, doing the second floor it was on 3, and when she was doing the roof, it was on 4. Then when she went back down to the second floor, it was back on 3. To me, that says the number was one off.

With Stonehearth, who knows anymore. At one time we were seeing an alpha every month or every other month. Then last year, we saw maybe 3 all year. That said, this year has been pretty good so far, so honestly, who knows?

Personally, I was thinking that the cost panel should be moved to the right, as the floor number was beginning to cover it up when it got long. The current layout may save mouse travel, but it (in my opinion) begins to look like it’d feel cluttered, hyper focusing the building in the center, rather than giving you the majority of the screen to work with. Again this is only perspective from your stream.

Not at all. It’s deffinitly an annoyance and a limiting factor for people like myself that want them in the ground, but it’s not a deal breaker. Now if we lost the single voxel mining tool, then it’d be a deal breaker.

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It was an attempt to bridge expectation gaps. I agree with you that it’s difficult to know, but I wanted to know what @oldmacman’s expectations were, in case a discussion would follow.

Seeing as the new unstables allow the team to release features in between alpha’s, and since they have a team that can focus on different things at the same time, I am not all that worried about how quickly new alpha’s come out, and instead look at the progress that is made in development. Basically if the builder takes so long that multiplayer is finished in the mean time (hypothetically), then they will come together in Alpha 24, and then it might as well be Alpha 25 as far as progress is concerned, so I’m not stressing that much about it.

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I’d say that’s quite optimistic. Neither building, multiplayer nor the water sources/drains have made it into the unstable branch, let alone the stable release.

The new building system looks great, but as the stream demonstrated, it’s a long way away from being ready. I notice that Steph is careful not to even hint at a timeframe. Everything is coming … just not yet :slightly_smiling_face:

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Water source and drains have been in unstable for weeks now. 3 weeks unless I’m wrong.

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…as a proper early access developer ought to, IMO. Stonehearth is ready Soon ™, which means it is ready when it is ready. I do not find this weird. :slight_smile:

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Wetstones and drystones are not yet in the game, insofar as we haven’t yet implemented exactly how you should be able to make or buy them, and we also have some ideas for wetstones and drystones of different sizes and water rates that we have to balance. However, if you really want to play with them, you can find them on our steam unstable branch via the debugtools mod.

Not available in unstable unless you use a mod. The unstable version of unstable.

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I’m afraid the last thing that StoneHearth can be described as is available soon. Ready when it’s ready is a meaningless tautology, that the developers of StoneHearth don’t follow anyway, the unstable branch being releases before they are ready.

I await wilh interest the first KickStarter that is brave enough to put the estimated completion time of ‘ready when it’s ready’.

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Correction: Stonehearth’s next alpha is ready Soon™. That is what I wanted to say.

Unstable branches are not releases meant for players who expect it to be ready. Seeing it as if it were will make one more dissappointed. I personally do not view unstable releases as full blown releases because of this.

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If you’re calling the Dev Tools a mod, then you need to call the base stable game a mod too (as technically it is with how it’s made). That said, I don’t understand the unstable of unstable part. What’s unstable about the Dev Tools?

Me’s thinks you haven’t actually tried unstable or the dev tools and should.

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I can understand then, that “Meh, the alphas are still coming out with consistent progress, so there is nothing to worry about” is not good enough for you, and that you want an release time to count down to.

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This will be added back in, I just have to hunt down everything that needs tooltips and find the corresponding data as I’m cleaning up the ui. Fixtures/furniture/decorations are another thing that needs them.

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