Hi folks. Long time lurker, first time poster. I’ve been following Stonehearth since a few months after the roadmap was implemented, thanks to a friend of mine tossing something resembling a trailer my way. Love how it looks and what you guys are doing with it, but one thing has been keeping me from snagging it during alpha (aside from my experience-induced paranoia of supporting early access games):
Every time a new release comes out, I wait a couple weeks and check forums, discussions and reviews, and the one thing that’s consistently there is issues with the building system - buildings, especially complex ones, glitching out, not working properly, not demolishing properly, etc. To me, this seems like a pretty big red flag, particularly for a game that seems to have such a large focus on the building system. Yet with every new release, it seems the same issues are present.
So with my wall of text done, my question is this: is there a reason for the delay in fixing such an omnipresent issue (such as future development focuses potentially throwing a wrench in any fixes applied now), and do you have anything resembling a time frame on when these issues might be addressed? Can provide a few specific instances if need be, but as I haven’t acquired the game yet myself, they’ll all be second-hand. Cheers!
every alpha has it’s own major focus, A16 was focused on combat, Alpha 15 was about performance fixes, and so on. a lot of the building bugs are things that generally can’t just be easily or quickly fixed, and because every alpha has it’s own focus, some of the harder things to fix sometimes wait for the next time an alpha is focused on fixing/improving that feature.
that being said, as far as i’m aware A17 will be focused on building improvements and bug fixes.
now i’m not very good at explaining things (and i’m also not part of TR), so this probably isn’t the best reply, but i hope it helps answer your question
i’ll also page @sdee (one of the devs) to see if she (or someone else from the team) can give a better explanation/answer to your question
Thanks for the response and the dev tag. It’s good to get at least some insight on the reasoning and process. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the progress then, and look forward to build 17
Correct me if I’m wrong but they’ve been trying to find solutions since alpha 15…maybe earlier if I recall. There is always someone over at Radiant trying to squash the issue. The problem is that the issue is something that is embedded deep within the code and the logic of all the hearthlings. They’re getting closer to squashing it completely. It’s WAAAAAAAY better than it was even 2 alphas ago. It’s a continuous work in progress and gets better with each iteration
Reviving this rather than make a new one. Soooo is the building optimization bit going to be worked on in Alpha 18 as well? From what I’ve seen 17 fixed nothing. Still getting frequent reports of clunky UI, erratic/failing ‘clear’ and ‘deconstruct’ functions, hearthlings having trouble building scaffolding…trying to be patient and all waiting for an alpha that fixes it, but these issues have been present as far back as I can find.
You have to understand that its not something that can easily be fixed… since players can build structures of many types and things that the devs might never have even thought about… i dont think itl ever be perfect since there is literally unlimited building potential and they cant account for every possible combination of building parts…
However i believe that soon itl be in a state where most things will build properly and only the very unusual buildings will have problems… its getting better and better with each alpha.
They are continuing to work on the building for the next few alphas as your right the building is one of the key features in the game… but its hard to make an AI that can build any arrangement of parts with no problems when it has to build each building piece by piece
I mean they could make it so that the buildings just pop into place and take time with an animation of them hitting it with a hammer or something… but that wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.
Then you would know they have been constantly improving the building mechanics throughout the entire development process. You will get frequent on and off reports throughout the whole process of thing’s not working correctly.
I really hope you don’t think issues like this/these is unusual when a game is being developed. If so you will constantly be disappointed with every game/software that is in development. If you do think otherwise then you live in a different world then the rest of us or your expectations are so high no other development team would be able to impress and satisfy you… ever!
That being said…
I am pretty sure they are more anxious to get this working fully than you are and will continually fix and re-fix and re-re-fix till it does work more times than not and they are satisfied with it.
By the way, the game is totally worth getting it right now. Radiant pours a lot of love and effort into the game and it shows, not only in game, but the way they talk about Stonehearth going forward. With every patch they fix a lot of things and with every new Alpha there’s quite a bit of new content. Not only that, but their transparency and candor about their progress, difficulties and future vision is what makes me come back to Stonehearth every new Alpha and that fills me with confidence that Radiant is committed to making a quality game. It’s USD 25 on Steam right now, and honestly, it’s a steal at that price.
^ This! So many many times this! You can feel, see, and comprehend the love Radiant has for this game and as a small company they do major feats even the big guys couldn’t hope to tackle! Been a die hard fan since alpha 3 or 4 and will continue to be because of their dedication to the game, community, and company!
