DT: Conversations - Design

Development
41

I’m having a hard time answering this.

  • First off, it depends on what you mean by “filler”.

  • Second, if you can’t show in-development items / upcoming items and the progress on them, and you haven’t really done anything show wise with the main feature for the last 3 weeks, then what would you have to show anyways? At that point, why not show the little that’s been worked on towards future items?

  • Third, it really isn’t about showing us you’re alive or to entertain us, as much as it is to connect with us. There are MANY MANY games out there that the developers are like “we’re not dead”, yet the game hasn’t changed in MONTHS, but we got to see them code.

Originally, DT was showing us what you guys were working on, and talking to us about ideas to add to the game, and showing us what’s coming up, and even changing directions based on how the players played. Now, it’s just…not. You guy’s hyper focus on one thing, and The End.

So what if you don’t have great detail on something yet? Just showing us that fishing is being worked on, and could be in the next alpha or two, or that everything that was done on the Magma Smith wasn’t for waste, etc, is still better than one subject for 3-6 weeks. It shows that more is being done than basically journal entries right now. Future features and the direction of the current features shows what we can expect.

Again using the convo system, to some of us, it looks like a waste of time because it doesn’t do anything. But to say “Hey, this is what we’re working towards and this is what we’ve done towards it”, I feel would level some of that more than just keeping us in the dark as to why nothing’s being added, and we’re getting a new type of journal that no one really uses.

Now, this next thing is a thought, that is DEFINITELY not my place to say, so I apologize ahead of time. But as far as the unstable branch goes, why not throw us a bone with features once in a while. You say it’s going to be 3 to 6 weeks on just convo’s, then who knows how long on lighting, well why not throw a couple pieces of furniture or armor or something small at us in the meantime. In game items that will also add to the environment you guys want. Hell, I know I’d love some book shelves or new storage containers. Something like a book shelf would all of a sudden let the community build libraries and talk and share those, which some major ones could even be added officially to the blueprints. It’d give us something to gnaw on while the heavy features were worked out.

Now again, that’s not right of me to request or state that, and I apologize to anyone I’ve offended for that. But it is my 2 cents.

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42

First off, it depends on what you mean by “filler”.

Specifically referring to @Revenge’s ideas above, which he referred to as “filler”.

Originally, DT was showing us what you guys were working on, and talking to us about ideas to add to the game, and showing us what’s coming up, and even changing directions based on how the players played. Now, it’s just…not. You guy’s hyper focus on one thing, and The End.

I really feel your frustration here, becuase I too feel like we’re somehow managing to talk past each other. I’m sorry about this! I guess I’m not sure how I can explain our situation better. The team is working on a bunch of things, and I make Desktop Tuesdays about whatever we feel is ready to show. This was the roadmap a few weeks ago (what was coming next), darkness (what was coming next) and conversations (what we’re working on now). The rest of the things that are currently in flight (AI, performance, building, prototyping, other art) just aren’t in a place that would make a good video yet. I can’t show you fishing or magmasmith or anything similar because we’re not working on them.

I do want to make sure that Desktop Tuesdays are useful and interesting to you, so please keep the ideas coming! It would be a terrible waste if we spent time making them and they were more disappointing than if we’d spent the time working on the game instead.

Now, this next thing is a thought, that is DEFINITELY not my place to say, so I apologize ahead of time. But as far as the unstable branch goes, why not throw us a bone with features once in a while. You say it’s going to be 3 to 6 weeks on just convo’s, then who knows how long on lighting, well why not throw a couple pieces of furniture or armor or something small at us in the meantime. In game items that will also add to the environment you guys want. Hell, I know I’d love some book shelves or new storage containers. Something like a book shelf would all of a sudden let the community build libraries and talk and share those, which some major ones could even be added officially to the blueprints. It’d give us something to gnaw on while the heavy features were worked out.

Actually this is a really interesting idea, and I think it’s a perfectly reasonable suggestion, and well within your rights. :slight_smile: (I’m not sure what suggestions would be outside your rights.) I’ve wondered if extra items like this would be a useful thing, because I could easily imagine people saying, “wow, why are you giving us crates when they’re all different flavors of the same gamplay” which is why we’ve never chosen to do this before. If people are interested about this, maybe it’s something we could do. New furniture and assets are relatively inexpensive.

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43

@sdee at least the biggest thing for me is when you say things like we are going to be working on people then economy and so on, it would be nice to give maybe a small laundry list for what you guys have planned in each visit to these systems (if it is ok to ask) so that we as a community can have something to progressively look forward to. I know it sounds like a rant and people will say look at the road map but if we knew the exact order things are worked on in the future it would be amazing.

Edit: for instance like conversations in the people systems

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44

If small assets are needed, there are some interesting items in the game already that just lack a way to be crafted.
wall_crest
poyo_weathervane
dummy_training
bronze_portcullis
If I remember correctly, the portcullis was not in because it lacks animation? Just add it as an static object for now.
The dummy training was probably from the idea of training soldier, it can also be just static decoration.
There is also a sundial folder in the game, but it lacks a model. Considering we have real shadows, it could work as a real clock.

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45

I suggest more objects because they’re extremely easy and as you said inexpensive to make. There’s an entire mod devoted to containers and another devoted to doors and windows.

When I build a city I feel like it’s so empty with just the base decorations. I can’t really make a workshop for say my carpenter without it looking bland or generic the flavor of the items just isn’t there.

Giving us different flavors would honestly go a long way in the current replay value of the game. Even just the re skins of monsters presents variation that we can discover.

Personally I’d love to see a table or shelf that let us put items on it like a stockpile.

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46

I will second this idea. It would go a good length to explaining why, for some players of all things, conversations are currently being worked on.

If you are worried that showing future plans in DT’s violates rule 3, and gives us expectations, then explicitly tell us that it is not set in stone. If you feel that we will develop a expectation for the scope you are showing in the DT’s, then say that that is not set in stone either. If you present it as your current plans, presented to explain why you are currently working on what you are currently working on, and also, why you aren’t currently working on what you’re not currently working on, you will get away with it.

I found this explanation pretty convincing in why hearthling systems are important.

In short: You can use it to explain the present, not to promise about the future, and if you say explicitly what that means, you will get away with it. :reassuring:

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48

What i personally see as an issue, is not the fact that the team has worked on the things during the week. But the fact that your interaction towards the community is going down a path in the forest, that leads to a secret hideout, where the players have no access.
Thats fine and all, but if you then came out of the “hideout” and showed the players that you actually still was following along on what the community was doing during the week, it would give people that feeling of being noticed?
Then you could go into the hideout again and work on all the secrets :wink:

Of course, if the matter is that you actually dont have the time anymore to follow your own community, because of the new and bigger workload, then there is only two options as i see it.
Either be honest about it and go all in on the “secret hideout”. Or make some changes to the routine so the value of an interacting community will continue.

I my self have already accepted that the wind have changed so i cant pick up your scent anymore and have decided to lay my head and rest until you (the team) visually return to the community camp,

Keep up the spirit and will.
SH have changed my life aswell.

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49

I’m surprized i never thought of that!

A good example would be Warframe with it’s more or less regular adding of Weapons (not characters/warframes) thay are easy to make and are a good way to keep the player base engaged in the game, i mean, it’s awesome that we’re getting some great in-depth development that isn’t just slapping on new classes and such, but at the same time, the game does feel rather empty not just in system(which is being worked on) but also visually, we have little furniture to really play around with, and not that many decoration or weapon & armor options, i know balancing is an issue with equipment, but we have a community to test that! You could tweak weapon balance based on community feedback and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do so!

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50

I personally think they make sense if used in moderation.

  • Raj isn’t always going to have new music, but once in a while wouldn’t hurt to throw them on.

  • Q/A with some of the builders over some of the larger projects shown I think would go a long way. It’d give you guys feedback as to what was able to be done and what had to be “ib”-ed in. On our side of it, it will give people, like me, that aren’t as artistically inclined, pointers and thoughts to help with their buildings.

  • Quarterly Roadmap updates, I can agree with.

  • Stream Recap I can definitely get behind, as well as others, can too, it seems.

  • Stonehearth Builds is a great site…that needs some work. But none the less, it would help y’all look at some decent builds.

This is where the difference between multi-colored crates, and weapon display racks would come in. Something like different colored crates won’t give us much to add to our builds and really doesn’t give us new creativity. But by adding a weapon display rack, we can begin building an armory. With bookshelves, we can make libraries. With longer benches, we could make churches (for the one true Bunny God of course). The lists go on with water buckets for the blacksmith, training dummies for the soldiers, display tables for stores, etc. Hell, I’d love even a toilet and bathtub for my houses to make them feel more real.

Now that being said, later on, some retexture might be nice, like how we can buy red versions of the carpenter’s stuff. But we’re early enough on right now that just having another piece of furniture would go a long way.

Basically, @Yosmo78, @nikosthefan, and @Fornjotr have said what I was trying to say. And (hopefully), I understand what you’re trying to say as well.

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51

Personally, I am happy that DTs continue on one subject for more than one week, TS can’t show what they haven’t got.

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52

@SirAstrix @Hyrule_Symbol @sdee

I always considered this thing to be, from one side, self-evident and thus hesitated to talk about it.
And from the other side, as much as I insist that “devs are doing good by prioritizing core mechanics over adding flavor” and “fans can mod in the furniture but not the features”, I, too, want to see more of it.
Actually, you know what, I’d say more. If connecting with the community truly becomes somewhat problematic, why not… Ahem. Don’t throw rocks at me. Why not add some fan-made content (or slightly modified fan-made content) into the core game? By making an open contest-like event. With different topics and different areas to improve. And open discussion. And maybe even a voting system.

I know fan-based contributions are in many ways a controversial ground, but in my opinion in this case HOW you do it is no less important that WHAT you do. Radiant has been friendly to us so far, so I think it can be done good if the spirit is right and the heart is in the right place.

PS. Also, working on little “side projects” like furniture can help the team. It isn’t very difficult and provides a change of scenery to take some rest from focused efforts.

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53

This didn’t go well for Minecraft at all when they tried it, and I’d hate to see Radiant fail the same way. At the same time, I also hope that Radiant doesn’t go the same way as Mojang and chalk stuff up to “the modders will add it for us”.

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54

Ah, Minecraft is a model of love/hate relationship. I always say that Minecraft is interesting in terms of creative freedom (sandbox) but horrible as a game (usability, gameplay etc). So yeah, it’s not an example of good communication.
Another not-so-good example is Chucklefish and some of their decisions. Like when they included the automatic turret mod into the core game at one point but failed to maintain it, and in the end stripped it of most functions rendering it ineffective and useless in terms of gameplay.

Radiant, though, so far demonstrated that they mean good and are responsible enough. Maybe they can do it right.

PS. It would be interesting to do creative challenges even without “the winner gets his stuff integrated” - things like these create more topics for conversation, both dev-side (DT-like community overviews) and community-side (forum discussions).

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55

Just to circle back, your comments caused us to have a few discussions about purely decorative items & the discussions have reminded me it’s problematic for a couple of reasons:

  • We really want stuff that exists in the game to work in game. So like, bookshelves should allow you to take books off and learn from them. Gameplay design is currently bottlenecked so we don’t have a lot of latitude to do much more gameplay at this time. If you make assets in advance of gameplay, there’s a chance you may have to go back and fix them up later. Better to use the time on stuff that you know will not have to be revisited, like animations for a current feature.
  • But what about items that don’t seem to imply function, like more fountains? Well, we want to do an update art pass on all the items in the game. This is blocked behind some of the aspirational tasks we’re working on, because the aspirational tasks influence the look of the game as a whole. Anything we add now will as above, have to be touched up again later.

Therefore to optimize our art efforts and reduce rework, we’re going to focus on only adding assets that don’t have to be touched up (animations are a good example) or on assets that offer gameplay function, like the new icons Allie just did for a handful conversation topics. Another example will be new workshop upgrades when we start revising the economy. These assets will still have to be touched up, but we’ll eat that future cost in exchange for gameplay feedback now. This will be true till we finish some more of our aspirational experimental work, which won’t be for a while; it’s not even really yet in a state to talk about. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m sorry this is the outcome–we find this very frustrating–it’s so tempting to just jam in some lovely things because you want them!–but we agreed together that SH is a game that will benefit, long term from having a ton of art. The right thing to do for the game is to work as optimally as possible on this art, which means working on animations now and objects later. When I can talk more about the aspirational stuff, which unlocks all these other things, you’ll be the first to know.

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56

Sounds good to me. I’ve been watching this game (and sometimes playing it or modding it) since the early days of the Kickstarter. I even made some bookshelves. Decorations are something that modders can do very easily.

It does sound like you’ve come to realise that as you grow the game and the company, you get a lot of overhead (communication, technical debt, etc). It’s no accident that most companies test out all their features and create pipelines for content in the early days, so that they can get the most work down in the least time later. The only difference is that you’ve been doing it in front of a live audience!

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57

This is something which I’ve had to learn the hard way as an Early Access supporter of… oh, I’m not even going to bother trying to count how many games anymore, hahah!

As cool as decorative/cosmetic/just for fun features and “sneak peak” content can be, there comes a point where it becomes a mess of going back to re-do the things that no long play nicely with the new stuff. I think of it as good fortune that you folks hit that realisation when you did, and when Riot were around to back you up and, effectively, say “yes it’s ok to go back and change everything if you need to.”

I’ve seen a lot of amazing games die when they reach that point – they need just a little bit more work in the core gameplay to really shine, but that requires stripping down the whole game and putting it back together again, which naturally takes time… and that’s the one thing you don’t have in alpha builds (especially Early Access through Steam.)

So yeah, you have to understand your priorities; and the good news for us is that you clearly have a solid reason behind your decisions. Something I’ve seen time and again is that it doesn’t matter so much what the decisions is, as why it’s been taken; successful games are the ones which do everything for a reason. I’ve seen some games do incredibly well even though their development process was a shambles; and I’ve seen some very well-made games fail completely simply because they didn’t stick to their ideas. The greatest tragedy is always when a game spirals out of popularity and into un-viability purely because the developers started giving players exactly what they ask for, rather than what the dev team thought would work better.

But, there is a way to get the best of both worlds: have the dev team release some mods! You have people who, I bet, are just itching to make awesome furniture and decorations; if they’ve got a little down-time then they could fill it with making simple mods or “experimental explorations”, release them as separate mods on the explicit basis that they’re not official content but something done for fun, and make it clear that these mods won’t necessarily be supported. If players love these mods to bits, we can keep them updated; and it’s a great way for you guys to test some ideas and get some discussion happening. It’s also a brilliant way to introduce new team members both to the game and to the community.

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58

To iterate, Minecraft had plans (before 1.0 released) to use a player created mod that increased the visuals of the game. It was a must have for frame rates and looks. But when it came down to it, the mod author wanted royalties for them to use it, and started demanding way more than they should have. Eventually Mojang pulled out of the agreement, and shortly after the mod got a bad rep and was discontinued. Yet what it did was a major feat.

Pistons, were the only successful add that I know of, and even then that came close to a lawsuit, as Notch did change it enough to make it original…but only just enough, if you know what I mean.

I understand, though wish otherwise. As a personal request then, would you be allowed to share the art remake as it happens? Myself and others love when new art is drawn or a new concept is sketched (like the edge of the map images). This could be like that.

I’m going to be against this, completely. I can see (as an example) bookshelves being added in as a temp mod, losing support because water need to be reworked, and then the team either never adds bookshelves now, because it was a mod, or someone else picks it up as a dead mod and that creates issues down the line. My list can go on, but I see this not working at all.

Come to think of it, didn’t the cooking mod start this way?

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59

That’s why I released mine under GNU.
While I could always use some money, especially now, and it wasn’t the easiest decision, I considered it to be the most optimal way for reusing my stuff.

I think it’s all about communication. Life time and again showed me that “obvious” is not always obvious for all participants of the discussion. Setting transparent rules, striking deals and agreements no one can back from, discussing conditions ahead of time. Not an easy thing for some, but still, I guess it’s the way it should be done.

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60

You’ll find little bits and pieces of it in Allie’s streams, but yes, once we’re in a good place, we’ll share what we have. For future reference, here are the streams she’s done on this so far:

Reiterating: this is concept stuff, so it’s in the vein of exploring what’s possible. Some, all, or none of this may make it into the final game, but it’s important to know where we might be going in pictures before we try it in code and assets. :slight_smile:

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