Greetings, and hello to all!
Additional info: I play in Full Screen. And play a 2x Speed. Shadow Detail is at 0. Maximum Number of Lights is at 0. Draw Distance is at 1000 (Honestly never noticed it till now, changing it to 500 mid typing this.)
I only recently purchased this game (Via Steam August 18th, 2015) and already I have taken quite the shining to it. Being an Alpha, I’m well aware of the bugs and glitches that are to follow, so this is by no means a rant, nor rave. More so, just a break down of my experience thus far.
I managed to play a little bit prior to the release of Alpha 11 patch, and I can already see a massive gameplay switch, most notably the crates… sweet Goblin jesus, I love the crates! I had fields of inventory prior, where it looked magical, it was undoubtedly causing some much unwanted lag and performance downers.
Going into the Alpha 11, I have to say I enjoy the new Main Menu, and the Embark Screen. I was making a comment to my friend who I wanted to be able to name my little Hearthlings, and lo and behold, now I can~ Following that, the map generator is wonderful, granted from my 10-20 rerolls… I noticed mountains were more abundant than anything else, not sure if that’s intended, or it was my luck of the draw. I finally settled on one design, still quite mountainous, but I used a nice corner of the world to build myself into for protection on 3/4 sides.
The game, much like to the prior patch, started off nice and responsive. I built my sleeping quarters, made a dinning hall, added another sleeping quarters, etc. Once I progressed a bit further, I decided to give Wheat and the Cook a twirl. Wheat grows… really… really fast. Fantastic for production, murder on my poor single farmer at this point in time (Note, I have two 11x11 farm fields, 1 for Turnips, other for Wheat.)
With that under control, as more Hearthlings coming into play, the Second farmer made things much easier to manage. On to the next troubling issue my poor little fellows stumbled onto. As mentioned previously, I was surrounded by mountains on 3/4 sides. Apparently, if you build 2 blocks away from the wall, the Hearthlings scaffolding starts to stick to the wall, and they will stop building that wall, then continue to build the roof.
With that building… eheem, ‘complete’, the issue I had in 10 begins to rear its ugly head. “You wanted me to do what? Nah, it’s time to Idle.” All my workers suddenly give up the ghost, and stop building, stop collecting, then slowly begin to starve themselves. The issue itself is easy to fix, I save, then reload the game, then suddenly “OH DEAR GOB! WE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING THIS!” And like a fire in their pants, they all sprint off, grabbing, gathering, building.
This issue only progressively gets worse with each structure that enters the world. I enjoy to mico manage, and will normally do multiple things at once, but once I have to reset at least twice, I begin to build things one by one to ease up on their stress, without much avail.
During certain Goblin raids, I fear for the safety of my Hearthlings, due to my little ‘Army’ deciding the Idle game is the best game to play. Even when placing them in a party and sending them off to march upon the Goblin Menace, they just relax standing in the farm, starving, grabbing some turnips and setting them down, then deciding they want them, then figure they hate turnips… Know what? Wouldn’t hurt to try them, nah, these belong on the ground! Then they begin to quarrel with the farmers, then the workers, over who gets them! Each character begins grabbing them, then setting it back down, all the while the Goblin makes his way into town. At this point, I just save, reload, then watch the Goblin explode.
From time to time, using the “Town Defense” button will snap the Hearthlings from their idly slumber, dreaming of doing work, when they are… well… NOT doing work.
As my time progresses, and the buildings continue to grow, then the ever present lag becomes more and more noticeable, especially from the shadow cast by the clouds. They will intermittently pause, sometimes very briefly, other times as if it’s attempting to render something it shouldn’t be.
Moving on. Ladders. Useful things, love them so much, but my Hearthlings seem to think it’s hilarious to remove them from underneath one another, and leave their friend suspended in the air floating, unable to act. That fix is easy, just build a ladder ONTO the hearthling, then they climb on down. I learned this a few times while they were building houses in town, but predominantly I noticed it when clearing a chunk of mountain out of my town to expand evenly. The Hearthlings don’t seem to know how to automatically not be stupid. There’s a ladder here? How about I destroy this block connecting me to the ground! Annnnnd, stranded. When they get hungry, or Idle crazed, they will stand beside the once safe haven block that lead down, and stare off into space, lost and confused.
I don’t know how many ladders I had to build to completely destroy the area AND get them all down safely from their floating prison, but I managed.
A topic I forgot to mention: The Vanishing Item Placements!
Every now and then, while placing an object (I noticed it mostly occurs with Fence posts, or anything similar.) I was manually pick a spot to build a fence, and… that’s it. it never gets placed, but it pretends like it did. Even in my Placement inventory, it still remains, but I am no longer able to place it. Trying to MOVE the object doesn’t work either. It is a forever ghost of itself, and a wasted product of my Carpenter or Mason. Not to mention, Goblins love to run through these lapse in items! “There’s a hole! CHAAAAARGE!”
At this point in time, I have 51 structures built. I’ll add screen shots of my village when I put the addicting thing down long enough to actually post them. If I stumble across any other abnormalities… I’ll be sure to share them. But until next time ladies and gents!
The Gancey Goes Poof!
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