When you create a wood/stone pile you can place it to save space. 18 logs of wood in a 2x2 (?) aint bad. The only problem is that I feel it’s not working as it should be. To be able to make use of the pile you have to harvest it, forcing it to be destroyed.
WHAT IF builders and workers could grab a log from the log pile when needed, and just one log if they needed it? Seems a smarter way to make use of them, and more intuitive to! If something was piled up, you don’t make havoc and destroy the whole pile when you only needed one item. When the last log in the pile is been used, it disappear.
that would be contrproductiv and just a container xD the piles where create to less the entitycount - so that your game will be faster. because every log is an own entity and after the pile creating 18 entities where created to 1 entity^^
I don’t agree. Whats countproductive is to waste the time creating these piles just to harvest them all later. There is a issue on how to represent a pile with 18 items vs a pile with 2 items. Just to let the player know its not a full pile. Howerver this could be solved rather simply. If count in pile < half, scale the pile to 50%. Else 100%.
I don’t like the way they work now. I usually have a 100+ wood in my stockpile. To free up some space and make it look good the piles are interesting. But they take a lot of time to create, only to be one click havested and destroyed later. making a mess since alle the blocks randomly gets placed around.
To make them work like suggested, where workers can go to the pile and fetch the amount of items they need is reasonable… its how every store works when they pile up stuff. You dont destroy the whole container and make a mess just to get that one item.
ok again log = entity = memory -> 100 logs = 100 entities = 100x memory … do you understand? your idea for a pile as a container its not the idea here. the idea is 100logs = 5piles + 10 logs = 15 entities = <100 entities
there is also a mod where the piles take 100 logs etc. for pc with bigger memoryissues.
if you want it you can simple make a container (large create etc.) and filter for only wood. BUT the piles are only to save systems from memoryusage (at the moment). they have add this because lots of players have problems because the amount of the entities - so they can solve the issue until they have found a solution.
and for your idea with different designs if full or not - that wouldnt be a problem BUT the piles will not changed into containers at the moment.
Several issues here, so I’ll just add my own fuel ;p
I think the main idea here is an “aggregated entity”, which can be used to represent identical entities which do not have specific states.
i.e. represent identical entities using a sample entity and a count.
Which i think is a pretty valid suggestion. Considering that the entity limit can be reached easily (and there was no way to create no ones, no matter crafting or farming).
Unless I am wrong in my guesses, this is not what the containers do now, as the containers just hide the entities visually, but the contents still exists as individual entities to the game engine. i.e. having containers will not reduce the number of things the system needs to represent.
The above aside, I also feel that the use of piles is somewhat niche. it is not actually used for storage in my games. It is used for :
reserved resources. To guard against the times when I accidentally exhausted stone/wood and then have an emergency situation where I need more but could not get it (e.g. sealed by a goblin siege). In this case, not being able to automatically use it is desirable.
decoration. And I certainly don’t want my decor to be disrupted
But at the same time, I would like to be reduce the mess (number of entities as stated in previous section)
(TL;DR) My suggestion: Introduce new aggregated storage
Keep stone/wood piles as they are now. (function as decor, emergency storage)
Introduce a new kind of explicit container (e.g. some holding rack, so that it will not auto-disappear when the contained resources are used up) that can convert specific entity type which has no custom attributes into a count.
e.g.
when built, a “wood rack” will be shown empty.
It is designed to hold say 18 wood logs. It acts as a sort of storage container in terms of interface, and hearthlings will move wood to it.
but once wood entity is placed into it, it will be converted into a count (i.e. entity destroyed. count increased by 1) if there is more than one wood entity “in” it.
at all times, as long as the count in the rack is not zero, it will “present” one wood entity, so that it can be grabbed by whoever needs it. And when that wood entity is taken, it will internally “create” another wood entity to be presented to the game engine. (so at all times, each “wood rack” will contain up to one real wood entity, no matter how many logs it is logically storing)
Well, the piles were built sp that they don’t take so much invertory space,
Since inventory limits were introduced, the excessive amount of stone and wood you get from simple harvest took up a large chunk of inventory, and makin them into piles will reduce 18items into 1, saving a lot on inventory for a resource so abundant
I had to LOL… the piles are there to save memoryusage? Then they are doing it wrong. We have been playing games like Age of Empires for instance for ages… the number of entities in Stonehearth is very manageable to say the least. What about Minecraft (a poor example really, but the number of entities is huge) The lags I’ve seen since kickstarter have been… interesting. The AI/LUA performance has a lot to go and would improve the game vastly.
But back on topic, in reply: The piles as is right now is just decoration. And for a 18 logs its a very expensive decoration. I rather set up dedicated boxes for the resources. I don’t think they did it because of memory, as any other games developer out there they should not be developing for top 5% computer specc, but rather target the low 50% so everyone could enjoy the game. But if they did and piles is a hack then the game is on a very dangerous track… (god help them, think of the multiplayer part ).
its an alpha so its totally normal thats not compatible for every pc - in normal dev - in alpha will be implented all stuff and in the betastate the code will be fixed and improved - so that its faster etc.
and yes its because of the amount of entities for (here are you correct) the pathfinding of your hearthlings xD
everything in the world are entities but when you harvest something etc. this entities will be your and the ai must check the useable, the place (for pathfinding whats the fastest way to it) of every owned entitiy and if some other hearthling use them or want to use it also… so there was 2 options to fix this fast - less hearthlngs = less ai checks or try to remove entities xD
like you see on the actuall alpha18 the improve at the moment the building system and the compatibility xD so step by step it will be better ^^
Well, no, because the game is different and games don’t manage entities in the same way, pluse it’s an alpha, and no, they’re not decoration nor are they really storage,
They are ‘compressed’ versions of the original resource, while not really true for @Wiese2007 way, it is true that compressing them would improve memory, but I for one don’t think it’s significant
If you play the game for a while with large mining plots,farming and lumbering, you are bound to face some inventory issues since they can take up to 1000+ invontory just with simple resources, and compressed versions of them (ex: Wood-log-pile, pile-of-stone, Wheat-bale) can save a big chunk of inventory, since making 10 if anything will save you about 150inventory space with no loss in actual resource since you can harvest it for the original resourse
Why i don’t call it ‘storage’ is because it’s not really accessible unless harvested, and it makes sense, since if you still have the items ‘inside’ of it, it’ll still take all that inventory, an they aren’t really decoration since it’s a resource, but you could definitely use it as decoration since they look nice
They have their real use, and they are really good at doing what they do, saving inventory
).