Pyrite's Alpha 22 Review

Window mysteriously opens. Walks in through door.
Well then, it has certainly been a long time sense I have been here. I think it is justified to say
I AM BACK!
I spared the time to play Alpha 22, as it had looked like that a lot of progress had been made. The last time I had played you could not even go up or down levels. After a few games, I feel like I can properly critique this alpha now. I feel like it is best to start by describing my last town, Amber Springs. Hopefully I can use Imgur here.


Amber Springs, as of me retiring it, had a net value of 40,000G, had earned 15,000G in trading, and a Military Strength rating of 2,317. It’s citizens boast several achievements, those being; digging a quarry all the way down to bedrock, completely digging out an entire corner of a mountain, building a bridge to cross the straight, had built all 3 monuments, had defeated Ogo using Mountain’s wind chimes, had crafted and placed all 4 gongs and defeated their warlords, and each hearthling has a good standard of living. Each hearthling enjoys the safety of walls, access to a variety of food, and a private bedroom with comfy beds, although Leif and Abi would care to disagree but I think they have been hit in the head by Ogres a few too many times.

I did run into my fair share of issues, however. Some of these are bugs and some are features I don’t like. As I read from my notes, I detailed that the game’s framerate/sim speed drops at night when looking at the town. I assume this is caused by the lights because I can look at the braziers at the wall just fine and the framerate returns to normal when morning hits and the lights are turned off. I think that the fences are cutely designed, but if anything, they can be hard to work with. Occupying 1 and two halves blocks makes them stack well with each other but they do not play well at all with full blocks or block sized decorations. Ogres I noticed are the game’s designated gate smashers, and while that is all good and dandy to stop a player from just turtling inside their fortresses, the Ogres seem to have a very fierce hatred of gates, as that is what they seem to focus on in a combat scenario. “Ma boiz gettin’ chopped up by humies? Betta smash dez gates furst!”.

After I had defeated Oghar Norwind, my game kinda went to hell. I don’t know if these are bugs or issues, but they definitely caused me some great grief. The morning after Oghar’s defeat, several instances of enemies spawned at the same time at multiple angles. At first, it was just a Kobold camp to my south across the bridge. I sent my warriors to dispose of them, then one of my hearthlings on the other side of the map got downed by an enemy warparty. As there was supposedly little time between “An Enemy!” and “Rose needs to be Rescued!” makes me assume that the greenskins had spawned ontop of my hearthlings. Rhea had managed to escape, but the enemy warparty then proceeded to sit ontop of Rose’s body. As I am ordering my warriors to take the enemy’s ground, another warparty consisting of ogres and kobolds just walked by the squatting party and made its way toward the mountain defenses. At that same moment as well, another instance of a Kobold/Ogre group was already rampaging through my outer-wall properties smashing whatever was breakable. After they got done polishing up the outer defenses they made their way toward town. So after having cleaned up the Kobold camp to the south and fighting my way to get to Rose in the east, my warriors had to then rush back to the main walls as it was being assaulted by Kobolds and Ogres. I have a bit of a gauntlet set up as a part of my wall, watched by turrets, and until this day no enemy has set foot in my town sense the wall was built. A few Ogres had managed to run the undefended gauntlet and infiltrated my town. My engineer was trying his best to keep the turrets maintained because they were going through their ammunition, but at the same time he could not do much as he was also under Kobold archer fire. At this point, my warriors were fighting most of the Ogres and Kobolds in front of the walls supported by what remained of the turrets, while a few straggler Ogres were rampaging through town. While this was happening, I was struggling to drag Rose back to her bed with the chaos that was everywhere. Eventually I lost track of Rose and the hearthling that was rescuing her, so I scanned the town without using the wall hacks. As I did not see Rose I assumed she had been placed back in her bed, so I put the town into Alert Mode to help deal with the Ogre problem.

So in the front lines, all of my warriors are in the process of dying. Why are they dying? Because the Clerics are not healing them. Why are the Clerics not healing them? Because they wandered into the pastures and elected to heal Poyos instead. Why do the Poyos need healing? Because they are starving. Why are the Poyos starving? Because the shepherds stopped feeding them. Why did the shepherds stop feeding them? I don’t know, maybe with all of this chaos and Ogres running around in town they missed their feeding schedule or something. Now with all of the enemies defeated, finally might I add, and new turrets and gates are being built I can finally breathe, but my warriors are starving now. Why are they starving? Am I out of food? That can’t be, I was swimming in it. Did the enemies steal the food? No, for whatever reason my warriors were glitched out and they were following the Clerics, which were back in the pastures healing the livestock. My warriors were pathing too the clerics and when they reached them they would walk back toward town but a second later would turn around and run back to the clerics. I just told them to stop doing their job and crisis averted.

Rose just died. Why??? I don’t know but the clerics are usually good about tending to wounded, so I don’t know why Rose died. At this point I’m outraged so I save-scum and see where I went wrong. It loads in about a little after the hoards are defeated so I need to place the turrets, traps, and gates again. I investigate why Rose was allowed to die and see if the clerics were for whatever reason not tending to her. I find out that she had apparently died at the foot of her own bed. I tell the town to rescue her again and I get to see the rescue animation for myself. As nice as it is, it takes the hearthling forever just to set Rose back into her bed, which is why I bet Rose died. When I put the town into Alert mode it must have interrupted the animation and they dropped Rose at the foot of her bed. Finally, though, the grief is behind me. I do have a little more experience from separate sessions, so I think I will recap with a good old fashioned Vice and Virtue section.

Virtues

  • Roofs. They work now!
  • Almost working building system!
  • Something relatable to a story!
  • Lots of different foods and crops!
  • Most everything tastes like Poyo. Except Poyo.
  • Mod support!

Vices

  • Rayya Roofs. They’re full of holes! Hearthlings complain about sleeping outside!
  • Almost working building system! Game freaks out when building too ambitiously!
  • Fences are awkward to work with.
  • Ogres think smashing gates is more fun than smashing humies.
  • Game dips when lanterns are on.
  • Long uninterruptible rescue animation.
  • 4 enemy stacks spawned at the same time.
  • Healers were healing Poyos over warriors.
  • Shepherds were not feeding the livestock.
  • Options took a second to find as they are at the bottom of the window instead of the side or top.
  • Hearthlings can’t mine upward.
  • How and where enemies spawn can sometimes mess up your plans, like in an empty space inside your walls.
  • I have had a few crypts spawn, immediately followed by some ogres which then they start fighting each other.
  • Ogres are notorious for cleaving everything away, like chests and crypts.
  • If an greenskin mob steals a treasure chest and you defeat them they don’t drop what they stole.
  • No workshop support!

I don’t know how this game is programmed, but I am glad that it has mod support, although no workshop support. I have taken one or two programming classes so I at least understand some of the concepts and processes that go on in a program. I had a few ideas that might help the game run better, but I can only remember one right now.

So say you made it to where event important items are put on a list for an event tick, which the game checks once every time interval. When the interval occurs, the game checks the list for event items, like say a sapling or a gong. The saplings are checked and they have a space requirement. If the space requirement is met, than +1 to growth. If the event checker reads that the sapling has enough growth accumulated then it gets bigger. It was a thought.

Anyways, I know that programming is hard, especially for a modular voxel game. Keep on building this building game. I feel like it has already passed Timber&Stone and Cube World, which are dead now, and it would be a damn shame to lose this one too. So keep on keeping on, you’re doing marvelous.

8 Likes

By the way, did I mention Leather Armor as Vice? I didn’t? Well, that’s a damn disappointment, because leather armor being better than padded armor is such a huge myth. Padded armor is more durable and protective than leather. Gambeson, a name for padded armor, (No wonder no one knows what a Gambeson is, not even google auto-correct knows what one is.) is historical and was actually used in the old times. Leather armor is purely a product of fantasy media, like vikings exposing lots of skin and wearing horned helmets. Here is a video from a historical expert.


From now on, I will rebel by never owning or equipping thick leather armor, either opting for padded or bronze. Also, can we not have Steel Mail? I know we have Plate Armor and Iron Mail but Iron is heavier and weaker Steel and I always feel bad that my footmen have to walk around in unnecessarily heavy Iron Mail.

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Herbalists are rather useless. They only help when a hearthling is downed. They would be much more useful if they could just go around using healing items on wounded, or on wounded that are generally sleeping.

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I remembered my other design suggestion. The Hearthlings are cute and all, but they can get eerie with their unblinking eyes. If you think it right and possible, I would suggest that the eyes be removed from the Hearthling models and instead use flat 2D animated images that are projected on their faces. I guess it is better explained as using an eyes image that is changed out or animated on the Hearthlings face to better express emotion. This would allow them to close their eyes as they sleep and make mouthless faces without changing out their model.

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Thanks for the awesome and detailed review! Much appreciated. Sorry about the starving poyos. T___T

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Can you change the crafting recipes for the comfy furniture? I can place building templates and I appreciate that the needed items are sent to the crafters but the building is always halted at the carpenter as they want to make the comfy furniture but they don’t have any normal chairs or beds.

Sorry if this comes on as “hostile” or similar, but it sounds more to me as if you need to prepare in advance rather than the dev-team to change their recipes.

Make sure you have a few regular chairs and beds in your inventory and you’re good to go, really.
Or perhaps, the Smart Crafter mod can help you out

If a template asks for a comfy chair, it sends the order to the crafters which is great. The issue is that my carpenter will get stuck on comfy furniture because they need the wood version. Why do I need wood chairs and mean beds lying around? I thought the template order was supposed to eliminate the need for stock furniture? I don’t agree that I need to keep wood furniture in storage because of how a recipe is set up.

In order to craft an item which requires Wood, you will have to keep Wood in your inventory.
In order to craft an item which requries a Peasent Bread, you will have to keep a Peasent Bread in your inventory.
In order to craft an item which requires a Gold Ingot, you will have to keep a Gold Ingot in your inventory.
Ergo, in order to craft an item which requires a Wooden Chair, you will have to keep a Wooden Chair in your inventory.

Template Orders do not eliminate the need for ingredients - it simply removes the task to manually add the orders to the crafter. (the player must make sure the ingredients are in stock though)
However, as far as I understand, the mod I linked you will set up the order to first create a simple chair and then a fancy chair; to me, this sounds like a solution to your problem.

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Wood is a base ingredient, do not start with me.
Only one thing in the game requires peasant breed, and that is the donation box. I should hope you are not commonly using donation boxes as decoratives.
Ingots I consider are pseudo-base ingredients. It would be nice for all of my ore to be turned into ingots on the spot but usually I do that in bulk and use it when I need it.
I don’t want to keep wooden chairs in my inventory just because I might need them for better chairs. Still don’t agree with you.

I agree with Pyre here. Of course the carpenter knows that he needs to make a simple chair first and it is just a undeveloped system, that the player needs to micro this.

@PyreStarite This system will get an overhaul in the future, so all you need to collect (other than wood :rofl:) is patience.

Thanks.

2 Likes

Ok, let’s not use various examples to explain how ingredients work.
Instead, picture the Wooden Wall Sign - if you do not have it in your inventory, you can not craft e.g. the Mason’s Wall Sign.
Signs can be used as commonly used decoratives.

No need to agree with me - we’re both posting our opinions here.

Agreed. But again, I don’t see the recipe itself as incorreft in this matter - it is the crafting system which lacks the use of logic such as "do I have a simple chair in the inventory? If not, create a simple chair first.
If I undeploy my already constructed simple chairs, I can use them to make fancy chairs. If the recipe does not include a simple chair, well then I just made all those starter-chairs for nothing :slight_smile:

And yes, eagerly awaiting that overhaul! ^^

1 Like