Just some questions and requests for the Devs

Suggestions
1

Hey guys! I see that you’re doing some great things so far in this game! I’m happily anticipating the release in 2014.
There are just a few things that irked me, however. Most of these things are just minor, aesthetic issues. Most of the weapons I’ve seen are just swords, staffs and some ranged. Will there be more variety of equipment like pole-arms for example? It just seems to ruin the fantasy-feeling of the game for me since all melee characters are wielding swords.

Also, in the trailer video, the combat looks a bit…mundane. Not that the core of the game is focused on combat as it is on city-building (which I am looking forward to more than anything else), but from your website and all, I felt that combat would be a good portion of the anticipated game-play. Now I know that what the trailer had to show was the unfinished product but I just want reassurance that the fighting will look more intense. The characters looked like runescape characters battling it out turn-based style.

Next, I’d like to mention factions. You’ve mentioned in the development road-map that other factions will be involved in the game. Also, there was the feature of a seamless map that kind-of resembles Minecraft’s map generation (in a way). What I want to know is if there will be pre-fabricated towns/cities from other factions/AI that will inhabit the world from the start or will the AI start out like the player and build a city from the ground up? Then there’s the question of map generation if new AI factions will be discovered as a player explores the world.

Also, I’d like to know if there’s a more intimate character management that might be implemented. Say, you can customize and control the mayor/Lord of the town (which is your own personal character). If there will be diplomatic discussions between different factions and trading agreements. If not, I thought this might be a neat idea just to have players become more attached with a person in the game.

I also thought it might be cool to be able to establish trade routes between cities if there is an AI faction with a town of some sort. Basically, a marketplace in town could be connected to each other by road and once the road is established, send some merchants to trade to whichever city the road is connected to via the road. Obviously I’m spouting bull out of the tips of my fingertips as I have no idea how the coding for this would work but just thought it might be an interesting feature to see if it is possible.

Next, I thought it might also be cool to add a caste system to the society within the game. It could be something simple like King>Noble>Peasant. Along with it, the ability to cultivate a family. Aging might be a bit too much hassle (and not enough output) to implement but to some players (I don’t know, maybe I’m the only one), it could provide an interesting story; the rise and fall of a dynasty or a noble family or maybe the rise of a commoner to nobility.

Also, I am hoping (but won’t be too terribly disappointed) if there would be technological advancement and if there would be (but won’t be too terribly disappointed) if the advances would be made “randomly”. I put the quotation marks there because when I mean “randomly”, its not completely random. I mean that if the player wants to made advancements in the field of armory, the player won’t be able to decide the specific advancement like “Chain Links” (for chainmail). Rather, the research made in the field of armory would be “random progressive”. So that while the player can’t specifically research a certain thing, the player can’t make Plate Cuirasses without being able to to make Leather Armor. Also, in this defined “random progressive”, there’s a chance that the research won’t yield anything new but it would improve upon something already researched.

Haha, I’m just going on and on. To be honest, I have no real programming experience so I can’t really be a critic of sort but these are just some tidbits that I’d like to know if you guys are able to implement. I hope some other forum members out there would also like to see some of the features I ‘requested’.

2

first of all, welcome aboard! :smile:

i have to head out, but wanted to leave a few quick comments

we dont know the full extent of weapons to be featured, but you can take a look around the discourse for a few existing threads on the topic…

very primitive combat was shown in those early videos… expect it to be updated quite a bit before the final system is fleshed out…

3

Many questions you have. The crystal ball consult we must :wink:.

To what we know, yes, there will be. E.g. you can see a polearm in one of the wallpapers with the Goblins on it.

The devs mentioned that they are re-thinking the whole combat-part. I guess we will have to wait a bit more to see some details (as also the first, playable release will not include too much combat).

Good question. So far we know that there will be settlements of NPCs / other factions. I cannot remember that it was mentioned if they will be growing or starting out small, just as the player.

Here you might get a bit disappointed. While you will be able to influence the quipment of your fellows, probably we will not see a system where you micro-manage your settlers. Some time ago a discussion was started on if there should be a major or king. The devs mentioned that they will think about it. Nothing confirmed yet but this might be something which players could mod in.

It might and it will as it was confirmed that there will be some caravans arriving in your town and that you should be able to do some trading with NPCs. How exactly… we will see in the next months, but seems like it is going in the direction you are mentioning.

Interesting idea. Maybe something for the modding-community? There are already discussions going on in this forum regarding implementation of children, etc.

Progression is planned that is for sure and not only in terms of armor or weapons but also in professions. However, how it is planned exactly we do not know yet. There will be some progression which needs to be earned by finding items, scrolls, recipes, whatever in the world. Other things will be unlocked by the level of your profession. Maybe we will see some surprise along the way.

P.S. Ah, Mr. @SteveAdamo embraces a new strategy. A first, fast post without content to ensure the 1st reply… pah! That’s not the way of the Samurai :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:.

1 Like
4

The combat is a little bit like in Timber & Stone. I would like to know more about the mining and building in the game (I think Timber & Stone is a good example). Will I be able to build my houses like in the pre-alpha videos or more freely like T&S (same goes for mining?). I know that it’s not very original to copy so many things from T&S but I think it does a good job (especially the comfort functions like: Chop all trees in this area.)

Note: If you find any mistakes (grammar, vocabulary …) catch them and then hide them in your cellar

5

@SteveAdamo has already addressed a couple of these, but I’ll just lump everyone into one response :smile:

We’ve only seen a small amount of weaponry so far - I would imagine a wide array of equipment to choose from, either through the vanilla game, or a mod pack - a weaponry mod pack is one of those things I expect to happen relatively early on :smile:

The combat system is something that by the sounds of things has been reworked quite a lot, like Steve has said we saw a very early prototype of the combat system - the proof is in the pudding I guess, and we’ll have to wait and see what they have in store for us!

That specific first question isn’t something I think we have a direct answer to … and I’m not sure if I want to commit to an answer … with the AI building up a settlement that would seem like they are directly competing/ growing with you, perhaps pre-built for you to uncover is the way it will be.

We know that the end goal is an essentially infinite world where you will never reach the boundaries - most of your time will be spent focussed on your settlement, I think exploration of the world is one of those things not set in stone yet, but I would hazard a guess that yes you will uncover them as you explore, or perhaps they will uncover you?

There’s a discussion about this over here, right now all things are indicating that you don’t have a ‘personal’ character - you are more the orchestrator of the settlement rather than an individual character, customisation will be a massive part of the game so rest assured you can customise characters and buildings quite extensively I imagine.

We’ve had a few discussions about trading and things like that - I’m swapping internet at the moment and am using my mobile as a connection so it’s a bit awkward locating the posts but they are there.

The thing with this, and the discussion has been raised in the ‘king’ thread - is that this then dictates to you a system that your settlement should have, perhaps not everybody wants a sort of feudal system in place.

Settler’s become specialised through their jobs so to then differentiate between this and a sort of caste system would be a bit problematic?

Families and aging has also been discussed [here][2].

In terms of technological development, again we’re not sure quite yet what the system will be, and I can’t think about what we’ve been told in regards to this - your example reminds me of civilization and i’m not sure how/ if that style of progression would fit in with the game, I’d reserve comment and judgement until I’ve played. Perhaps a system where you are limited by the materials at hand and the skill of your units rather than researching specific technologies would work better? Who knows.

Aaaaaaand I’ve been ninja’d by Voxel Pirate, never mind, it all still stands!

[2]: Thoughts on Children and Population Growth[quote=“Spododo, post:4, topic:3723”]
The combat is a little bit like in Timber & Stone.
[/quote]

Well, we don’t know that quite yet, I don’t think it’ll be quite like Timber and Stone, without a working model of what to expect it’s difficult to compare - I suppose the original system we’ve seen is a faster paced Timber and Stone system.

As far as I know this hasn’t changed … you have the ability to choose from a predefined ‘blueprint’ or a freeform construction … although I might actually be wrong here ( @voxel_pirate @SteveAdamo please correct me).

In terms of mining - the underground itself is (hopefully) going to be as fleshed out as the overworld, that’s all we know about mining, whether we are able to dig around underground, or have ore veins that we mine is yet to be seen.

6

Woaw. Fast reply. Thanks
Will workers loose their exp if they change classes (mason turns into blacksmith turns back into mason)?

7

This has been asked before, I can’t remember the response but I think it was a ‘no’.

@voxel_pirate I remember I’ve asked you this before, as they gave the example of the blacksmith and the fisherman I think (although this may have been focussed on initial job roles)?

I think the answer is no you will keep exp. but I honestly can’t remember sorry!

8

What I have in my mind is that Tom mentioned it would be a bit hard to lose all the experience you’ve gained in a profession simply because one of your settlers died or you want him to do something else. So probably you will “keep” it. However, I think we are lacking final details on how this will work exactly.

1 Like
9

likewise:

Do I build my houses brick by brick or slap down pre-fabs?

“You have two choices. You can layout floor plans and choose different types of walls, roofs, etc. Check out our prototype video56 to see this in action. If you’d rather not do that, you can just slap down a pre-fab. Eventually we will support designing your own prefabs, which is basically like building on a blank piece of paper and saving it instead of building directly in the world.”

i concur…

1 Like
10

Seeing as most questions have been answered extensively and I agree with all answers, I have nothing to add.

However having said that, I want to expand on what @voxel_pirate was talking about with technological advancement. As far as we know, I don’t think we will see technological advancement like you envision. Moreover, we will see advancement in a slightly different way; through the professions. Since you need certain professions to be able to gain other professions, or make certain materials or do certain things, you could definitely argue that the profession tree is like a tech tree. So in order to eventually reach a big game hunter you would need a blacksmith to make the spear for him as well as a hunter to provide the skill set a big game hunter would need to have.

You know what, ignore that first bit.

Also, going with what has been said about combat, the devs have mentioned a big reworking of combat, so what we see as the final product may well be quite different. Having never played/seen T&S actually played, the combat reminded me of combat in Settlers II.

And for construction, just a note that the devs mentioned a complete overhaul of construction not too long ago to make it more moddable. I’m pretty sure they mentioned something about the new system and how it was better but I can’t remember specifically what. How ‘complete’ this complete overhaul was, I don’t know. I would expect to see the same pre-fab and customisable construction options though, particularly the customisable way in which you draw your own floor plans and choose your own walls and roof(s) etc., as they were so excited about this system in their early dev videos and KS video, and quite frankly it was fairly awesome then.

1 Like
11

gah! I was looking for those very comments on the updates to construction, but got sidetracked… and now I’m stuck on my phone…

weep my friends… weep for me!

1 Like
12

Thanks guys for the quick replies! This discussion has cleared a lot up for me. I look forward to the final product the brothers have in development as of now.

The one thing I’m hoping for is that the game won’t be lacking in depth. It’s been either Dwarf Fortress or Dwarf Fortress that held my interest for more than 1 month in this genre.

Kudos to the duo developers for creating Stonehearth. The roadmap and progress is very promising.

PS: I’d back you guys more but I’m a poor college student. I shouldn’t be playing video games at all actually but Stonehearth is too interesting.

13

From what we know so far it seems that depth will definitely be in there - not so much in the preview release, but definitely as time goes by.

Maybe not as crazy as DF, but ya know, a happy medium :stuck_out_tongue:

There’s 6 of them now! Which makes for super awesome progress (at times).

Whilst I’m sure they would appreciate the shirt off your back, it’s probably best that you keep that :slight_smile:

14

nah, fork over the shirt… they’ve been paying @not_owen_wilson in cans of baked beans…

1 Like
15

Heinz though, so it’s all good.

1 Like
16

You can’t wear baked beans, though. I’ve tried it, and it’s nothing but sadness.

5 Likes
17

The single most perfect comment on the discourse.

18

back on track! the comments were from a KS campaign update (derp!):

Construction

We’ve overhauled the construction system to give you a lot more flexibility in how you construct your buildings. You’ll be able to define any kind of floor-plan you like, not just square rooms, and for each part of the building (walls, roof, columns, etc) you can choose from one of many styles. In December we will only support 1 level buildings. We’ll add support for multiple stories soon after the first release.

1 Like
19

Hey, it’s been awhile. I know I’m like a pestering baby brother.

I have a few new questions about development. The major differences between the latter part of this list of requests and the first post is that this one is more fantastical and seems to be spouting from the colon of a rainbow-colored giant imp. They are ideas that that are most likely not able to be implemented.

First, I wanted to know about the animations. If the characters will be performing magical rotations when changing directions or if they will have a pivot animation when changing direction in movement. And then there’s the fatal case of the reverse moonwalking that has plagued earlier games. Just wondering if such things would be ironed out or implemented by the final build. (before I move onto the fantastical part of my post, I would like to request a high resource requirement for crafting weapons and armor that realistically require a lot of metal. To balance between stronger expensive equipment like swords and weaker cheap equipment like spears)

Second, I wanted to discuss about a living, breathing world in Stonehearth. At the heart of Stonehearth, I understand its about managing the city and the settlers. And when you stated that the characters will have idle animations, I was amused a bit. I was wondering if it might be possible to put “life” automations into the game. While I like the idea of all of the population working 24/7, that seems a bit inhuman(e). What I mean by “life” automations is the animations and the ‘jobs’ that characters will perform when they are idle. Like walking around the town, ‘talking’ with other idle townsfolks, ‘going’ to the store, sleeping, etc. So, instead of just generic days passing, there would be a calendar system and on certain days, certain workers would get a day of rest. At night, workers/civilians would go to sleep unless otherwise directed (nightshift, etc. I saw some screenies of this).

Third I’d like to see in this world is economy. Instead of dealing in just resources, it’d be nice to see currency circulation in the game. Automated housing upgrade/degrade based on the social status of the inhabitant. National treasury that the player can use to purchase resources from a trade route without sacrificing their own resources. This idea’s kinda stupid though but I think it might be an interesting addition to the game to have some more parallelism to our world.

Also, I’d like to know what is the maximum maximum population allowed in one world. I’m concerned about this part particularly because one problem I’ve had with many city simulators is the population. 100 people is a town, not a city. And it would be a very small town at that (not to mention being enough for a fort). I understand micromanaging would be a problem but I think that city simulators should have mostly macro managing with micromanaging here and there. In the case of Stoneheart, macro-managing would refer to resource farming, trading, any form of political/government management (if any) and army management while the micro-managing would be class changing for a character or giving orders to a specific character (or a specific group of characters).
Also, battles are large scale; fights where 30-60 characters are involved can be considered a brawl or skirmish at most. I’d like to see enemies being numerous as well.
As for managing who’s going to be which class, I thought it’d be nice to create a separate menu that has a list of available/assignable classes with sliders. People with no jobs would wear a non-class specific outfit (civilian clothes) while those with jobs would wear their class specific clothing. The sliders would indicate the number of people the player would like to be in that class. The movement of the sliders would be limited by the populace available for assignment.
The assignment of the classes would be either the location of their homes to the worksite or the highest stat (if stats are implemented in the game).

If I come up with more ideas (when I become neurotic), I’ll post again.

20

That’s what Tom mentioned some time ago. There will be a day-night-cycle, so your workers should work a bit, take a break and have some free time. They are not just jumping to bed but will enjoy “life”. The idle animations should also not be only different animations where the workers are staying on one point. It was mentioned that e.g. there might be a ball on the ground and once your worker is idle he will go to it and start playing. Also music instruments have been mentioned. I think this is going into the directino you have in your mind.

I think here Stephanie was stating in one stream that this will be part of the beta, to find out what feels right. However, the tendency is towards a smaller population as the devs would like you to have a relationship to each of your workers. That becomes harder the more you have.

1 Like