I really like how people miss-read everything to suit their way…
I’m not saying that Emoticons and animations should go away completely, I’m just saying there needs to be a game there also; not just The Sims Medieval.
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And what can Malley, the grafic-artist, hired especially for animating stuff, can do about this?
The devs clearly said some alphas ago, that the next alphas are all about making the game more stable and efficient, so that people dont start having performance problems with like 10+ hearthlings. There are players already who can easily manage 25+, so they did what they have told us. And then there will also be times where they concentrate on making content for the game.
So your only problem is (I guess) that the development is to slow in your opinion.
I am really disappointed with this entire thread. I come to this site and play this game so I can escape the toxicity that seems to pervade EVERY OTHER ASPECT OF MY LIFE. Because, until now, every other post has been positive. Modders sharing ideas and making more content to enjoy, people sharing their ideas with the dev team and getting great responses( I had at one point gone back and read old suggestion posts and seen things that I know are in the current game and that direct feedback to implementation makes me happier than you could imagine.). And people sharing their stories about the things they have built and the experiences they have had. All amounts to what was, until now, an amazing place to gather and share
The one person makes a post complaining about the game and then a few others emboldened by this start their own lamentations.
If you don’t like the way things are going and can’t express it in a constructive way then ask for a refund and buzz off. Save this kind of garbage for reddit or steam. I don’t want you here and I imagine many others feel the same way.
Can the site mods just remove this entire thread please?
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Full release. I’m talking about unstable releases. Used to get those each week with Desktop Tuesday. Yet it’s been 2 months and we haven’t gotten one. As for the full alpha releases, those have been mostly on schedule so I’m not complaining about those.
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There was always a break for a few weeks before unstable releases started pouring in. I think all the holidays that the team’s taking off: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, etc., have made this break a bit longer.
@Greymatter This is pretty calm still, and I don’t see any reason to remove it. That would just make all involved more angry.
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Well on the origin of the topic: i dont think it should be out of alpha anytime soon. If they finished all they prommised at the kickstarter is the time they should start concidering that.
My personal experience with stonehearth is this. Stone Hearth was the first thing i have ever backed on kicksterters and got super exited for it. I knew i had to wait a long time before i could get the game and i was fine by that. I think both i and the developers underatemated the time it would take but i am happy the dont rush anything and stay true to making the game they promised us and wich we and they love so much.
I have been real active on the discord for the first month after kickstarter. i really lik the community and am really happy to see it still being like it was back then.
Personally i really liked stonehearth from when it was playable. in the early days the fun lasted short cause there was just nothing to do so i decided to wait until it was further in development. in the last 2 years i have played stonehearth so every now and then and every time i played it i got sucked in to the game and quickly lost track of time.
I find stonehearth a relaxing and fun game to play. I am sometimes when i am playing thinking what i am actually doing and find out that i am only building some buildings, craft some items and sometimes fight of a few mobs but hack i am enjoying doing basicly nothing. While the core gameplay of stonehearth is simple they did a damn good job at making it enjoyable.
i am not the type of guy who follows the livestreams but i am really liking the game and am really pleased to see how easy the modding is and am really happy to be working and bringing you guys the mods i was already designing 2 years ago.
Overall i think the devs do a good job. I myself create board and cardgames so i have some feeling for that it is always way more work then you expect so i think even tho it does not go on top speed, they do it at at steady rate and stay true to creating a piece of art rather then a money maker. The love the game with all their hearth and the results shows it!
this all is a matter of personal opinion.
Yangzhoui out
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While i do understand where you sre coming from, a argument and conversation is a healthy thing to happen in a community.
this is a discourse, or rather, a discussion page, it’s important for members to vent out their concerns, doubts and feelings, so it can be informative to the developers or to have reassuring replies for the one concerned
It’s nice to have a happy All-Time-Rainbow website, but it’s better this way; arguments on schedule, race in games, gameplay, doubts, ect, are essential and it proves that the members are comfortable sharing their feelings, and for what it seems, with little to no toxicity to it, which is rare and great, it informs and helps the developers be aware of problems or concerns
This doesn’t mean the community is intense or not nice, it just means it’s diverse, and if you’re not comfortable with these posts, you can easily avoid them since they have quite obvious titles, after-all, the community itself is quite the happy and welcoming one
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This thread is a perfect example of Stonehearth’s community continuing to be strong and healthy years after the kickstarter. That’s a good thing 
On Topic: Grateful for Tom speaking up in that reddit post and letting us have a little insight into what is going on.
For getting the game done eventually I don’t think we have any worries. The team is growing, a fair number of new hires for a small group, updates are still happening, dev blogs are still weekly, streams are still 3 times a week (which still blows me away that they do that for us!) And backed by Riot, who seems to be sending all the help Stonehearth could want…
As to Beta, well here’s a comment from Radiant on the Kickstarter page:
Does this answer the original question? Probably not, but at least the devs let us know their thoughts on it. Which is something the team has always been good at.
IMO, keep asking questions, keep suggesting things, and keep supporting the team, but have the patience to realize we’ve got a ways to go, ladies and gentlemen.
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My 2 cents, I’m typically kinda blunt and overly sarcastic but here goes. If your not having fun at this stage in the game, then you probably never will. The majority of the core features are here and there’s not much to add that will change the way the game really plays. I’ve played a bunch of city builders, I have Banished, it was a decent game at launch, horribly flawed though till someone made a mod to make it better.
If people are mad because they gave money for the kickstarter or bought it when it was 30$, my message to them is, seriously? You’ve never bought a game played or for an hour and went “well, this game is crap”. If your mad because it doesn’t do something, calmly ask a modder, maybe it’s something small they can throw in. Me personally I don’t care about multiplayer nor do I ever expect it to make it in game.
My only gripe I’ve had is just performance based which they slowly chip away at so it keeps me from going full nerd rage. I can run a town of 30 easily, 40 is slow but doable, 45 is basically like trying to manage a T-ball team, half the team isnt where they are supposed to be and the other half are chasing a butterfly. Im just about to cross the 500 hour mark on steam for this game. I have 2 save files for cities right now. I play one till I’m bored then start another. Get bored with that, delete it then start another. It’s how I make the game fun for me.
All I’m saying is, make the game fun for you, the developers can’t do that for you.
Now go build something spectacular
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StoneHearth had 22,844 backers of which about 7K didn’t have early access. I don’t know how many people frequently use these forums, but it isn’t 22,844. This forum may be representative of backer opinion, but I’d suggest there’s a fair chance it isn’t. For example, the most recent KickStarter comments (remember these are backers too):
"Antonio43 about 14 hours ago
Going to mirror all of the recent comments. I backed this project way back when (2-3 years?) I am a mac user, and therefore have not been able to touch this game once. Risk vs reward I guess, more like risk then handed a flaming bag of pooh. (that I want to try so bad, just to make sure its not golden pooh). Filtered for pg amusement.
Slyde 4 days ago
I understand that.
What im saying is, I was in the tier that gives me the beta key, and I got my steam key 2 years ago. I think the concept of ‘beta’ is moot where this project is concerned… alpha is beta for all intensive purposes.
Chris Superbacker 4 days ago
@Slyde the game is in alpha. Alpha 18 was the last Kickstarter update.
Slyde on November 22
Well, i’m in the Settler Tier, which gives you access to the beta, and I got my key about 2 years ago and have been playing the game on Steam every since…
Chris Superbacker on November 21
@Slyde Beta keys haven’t gone out yet. The game’s still in alpha.
Slyde on November 10
if you mean a steam key for beta, then yes, people got them years ago.
Jake Jones on November 10
Has anyone gotten the pledge reward for this game? i have sent messages with no reply. I think i would be cool with just a reply!
amigacooke on November 4
@Karl
No, you are not wrong, StoneHearth alpha is only available in Windows.
Jason Theriot on October 19
Almost three years later from the original expected release date and STILL not even in beta. I agree with the previous post - chalk it up to a learning experience. This disaster is a great reason to not back a project with too high of a tier. I will continue to use KS, as I have been, but hopefully not for anymore projects with this result.
Paul on September 24
I just come here once a year out of morbid curiosity to watch the corpses of the projects I backed - I’ve stopped using kickstarter because of these. It’s 2 years after the promised release date.
This will never exit alpha and obviously they will never fulfil their promise of a DRM free Linux version and I don’t think they ever intended to. The creators seem to have moved on with their lives since. I think it’s time to do the same.
You’re all upset because it’s hard to admit you’ve been duped, it somehow feels it’s your fault. It does for me. Scratch it up to a learning experience.
Fabrice Rossi Superbacker on September 23
@Kevin Brown: Good call!
Kevin Brown on September 3
I think that Radiant should hire me as a consultant for the OS X/Linux build as our goals and mission statements closely align!
I have never developed or released an OS X/Linux game.
Radiant has never developed or released an OS X/Linux game.
I really have no plans in ever working on an OS X/Linux game, but anything is possible in the next 5 to 10 years.
Radiant has no plans in ever working on an OS X/Linux game, but anything is possible in the next 5 to 10 years.
I’d be a perfect fit!"
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This made me laugh way too hard as to how true it is.
I was a backer, and even then I had forgotten I had backed it. Got an email one day, 2 years after I had backed it, and decided to check it out. Now I don’t remember the exact Alpha version, but I want to say it was around Alpha 8 that I started playing. Wasn’t part of the discourse till version 0.1.0 (release 223), whatever that was.
All that being said, I was a BETA backer with the kitten pet option.
Yet here I am playing the alpha, and being part of the development. Hell, even a couple suggestions of mine have actually made it into the game. So to give any credit to the winers on Kickstarter would be an insult, as their intelligence apparently isn’t high enough to join the rest of us. Otherwise, you’d have to say that everyone you quoted were part of that 7k that didn’t go for early access.
That being said though…I am curious where my pet is, as almost a year ago, the code was found in the game for them…
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I know Radiant used to keep the Kickstarter updated, and it looks like they still are, if slowly. I don’t know whether it would be worth the time to respond to backers’ concerns, because a few might start trying to fight the devs.
It’s definitely not a good idea at this point for them to put a “full release” stamp on what we have now and push it out the door just to prove they’re not stuck in unending development. Far too many other companies do this, so I’m just glad Radiant hasn’t. Yet, if we want to be pessimistic about things, but I feel they would lose all support from their community if they did that. I bet even most of the people complaining at the Kickstarter would rather the game stay in development until it has most of what’s promised then be fully released right now without half of that stuff.
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I’ve given up hope of ever playing this game. This game which I backed on KS for $50 because they said they’d be releasing the game Dec 2013 (check the KS page, it’s still up) and that there would be a Mac client. Every year I check back in and see they’re still in Alpha. Four years now. Still in Alpha. If they’d told me four years (and counting) I’d never have backed these charlatans.
In the meantime, I backed ‘Kindoms and Castles’ on Fig. Those developers met their obligations and still managed to release a fun game. Best of all: I can play it.
The past three years I’ve checked in with Stonehearth, I’ve gently inquired about a Mac version. I’ve gently asked about a refund. And have had no response to either question.
So, no, to answer the OP’s question: why should they move out of Alpha? Dopes like us are paying their bills for them.
@sdee maybe you want to respond to this feedback, so @Backer_7300 can end up with a better feeling than now? 
I know Stephanie’s been too busy to be able to do desktop Tuesdays, so as a fellow macOS backer perhaps I can fill the gaps with material already posted in various locations:
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Team StoneHearth realised that their original strategy wasn’t going to deliver the game that they wanted (oops)
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A new strategy has been designed that will produce a deeper, better, lovelier StoneHearth, but sadly it means that an awful lot will need to be rewritten, and it will appear to be taking longer to get anywhere
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Sadly, you need a completed game to port to macOS and Linux (apparently, though others seem to manage concurrent development), so Linux/macOS backers need to be a little more patient (at least three years patient I’d estimate)
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We still love you, we just can’t do anything for you at the moment
Close enough?
Not really –
The first point is pretty accurate, but it’s not just a matter of strategy. The strategy would, in theory, give them the game they imagined eventually; but it might take an infinite amount of iterations and new ideas. They switched to a strategy which combined the higher experience level of their support network at Riot, and which is more “modular” so they can modify the strategy in the future without having to redesign large chunks of the game another time. There were also issues of scale, estimations based on outdated info (e.g. when the original time estimate was made, nobody was expecting that the team would be reading thousands of feedback posts across multiple platforms in any given month; that might seem ephemeral but it’s a very real time-sink), and the fact that the growing team necessitated a different approach to development because the original strategy was designed with a small team in mind.
As for the second point, that’s 100% in line with what the devs have stated.
For the third point, they’ve said that porting chunks of the game would be difficult and would mean that the port breaks pretty often; so they’ve deemed it more efficient in the long run to port everything at once and only deal with one big list of broken features rather than a lot of smaller lists at more frequent intervals. Concurrent development is possible, but will take longer and the port will still lag behind so it’s quite likely that Mac and Linux users would still be dissatisfied with that lag.
And for the fourth point, I’d call that completely off-base. The way I read @sdee’s earlier replies was more along the lines of “we can’t promise a quick solution, but we’re already doing what we can, and we’ll do our best to make sure everyone is satisfied as soon as possible.”
However you cut it Team StoneHearth have done nothing towards the ports to other platforms despite all the well meaning communication.
They’ve been building the entire game with porting in mind from day 1 – not every single line of code is “engine agnostic” enough to port easily, but as a general rule they’ve been taking the time to build a robust engine which won’t fall apart the second you take away Windows-exclusive libraries or software dependencies.
I’ll reiterate, taking steps to port the current game to different platforms was deemed pointless since it just means having to maintain the various ports, and have several versions of the game break when something goes wrong. By choosing to wait until the game is basically finished before porting, it means there’s not a lot the team can do directly now; but they are doing the basic/foundation work they can to make sure the porting process goes as smooth as it can. Every step towards a finished Stonehearth on Windows is equally a step towards a finished Stonehearth on Mac and Linux; at this point the two other platforms are proceeding at the same pace relative to the Windows build. The Windows build simply got a head start on the other two; all three have been advancing at the same rate for a long time and will continue to do so while the game is being “filled in”
I would like to object to this, however. It was their choice to build their own engine, which has its own advantages and disadvantages, but claiming this to be an advantage to portability would be quite dangerous in my opinion.
There are an awful lot of engines, frameworks and what not that are cross-platform (or at least, the three most popular ones). They are already cross platform, they are not merely “designed with it in mind”. They’re built and maintained by people that likely use those platforms as well, which might not be the case here (I don’t know if anyone from the SH team has experience developing for other platforms, or porting software, and is doing that actively).
If anything, using an own engine puts you at a huge disadvantage when it comes to porting something. If you have something that is truly platform agnostic, such as Unity3D for example, then porting would be already built-in, with very little development effort made. Instead, you have the joy of figuring out which bits can be ported, and which bits cannot, set up build pipelines, testing not just the game but the engine itself as well, and more. Times three.
Not necessarily. Internal tooling and what not might work for one platform, but not for another. As example, SHED is based on technology (WinForms) that is not available on other platforms. The big chunk, which is the game assets (lua/json/html/css/js) are inherently cross-platform, so those won’t change - but the tools, build processes and the engine itself might.
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yes, there are platform-agnostic engines out there; but how many do what Stonehearth does? With no engine they can easily pick up off-the-shelf, the team are pretty much forced into building a custom engine.
Now, I’d agree it’s not an advantage to portability over using an existing engine; but what I’m saying is that at least they’re not building their engine in a way that relies on a specific platform. They might not be experts in porting across multiple platforms, but they’re avoiding the bigger “gotcha!” moments by using platform-agnostic methods and software (e.g. using lua/json/html/css/js for the assets) rather than doing something like using .wav for their sound files.
As far as my later comment about ‘every step towards completion on windows is a step towards completion everywhere else’, well, that’s true for the time being. Eventually once the builds split up, there will be requirements for different tools and pipelines for each build; but for now, they’re working mostly on that big chunk of assets which won’t change between platforms. Even if the engine methods/inner workings do change a little between platforms, the assets will be a bigger part of the coming work than the engine will be; and besides that, getting the engine to run nicely on Windows first means they can test the gameplay and find answers to how the engine needs to run on other platforms (i.e. use the windows build to test out ideas and make sure the game is hitting the right notes before they start work on porting everything.)