Rawr's 0.8.7 Feedback

Rawr

Hey everyone!

It's good to see another update. As I've just finished my last exam for this semester I'm thinking about doing a good amount of RnR. That being said, I did want to push myself into getting some early feedback. Here goes.

Main pieces:
We'll start with the loot. I like the change. I know there's definitely the appeal to not have the sparkliness and get back to the more immersive representation but I'm sure thats something that can be progressed towards later. I'd be more interested in tidying up which loot object gets picked up from a group of objects.
Side note: Could someone point me in the direction of controlling the angle? My Portal Stone looks a bit funny spinning around horizontally, or is it inherently due to the model?

Now for the despawn timer on loot objects. You need to be aware of the following situation because it happened to more than just me. While playing on a multiplayer server, finding a hammer rock was a difficult task because they had already despawned when I entered the world. Not finding a hammer rock means a lot of things can't happen. There's still an ok aspect to it because it produce a world exploration effect but at the same time ... that'll get out of hand too quickly. Possible adjustments would be such that players could pick up the small rocks and smash them against the larger ones; There was also mention of wood tools. Point is, there's a couple of ways to go about it if you intend on keeping the despawn timer with it's current logic.

I found an edge case for loot. I fell onto a large rock part way down a cliff. After breaking the rock I fell down to the bottom but the loot remained suspended on the cliff. I'll leave this one for you guys to say "feature" if you wish.

Ah tools. I feel as though we're intent on playing the durability game. Basically, yes there's now a difference where I'd consider using the axe instead of the hammer to chop down a tree. I'd like to point out though that's mostly because I was paying attention to the small bars at the very bottom of my screen. Imagine if you removed them?
There's also a little bit of inconsistency with regards to which tool you'd use for the job. For example I decided to make a shovel which I thought would be a good idea for grass and dirt and sand but actually felt worse than using a hammer on a tree.

I started wondering to myself, why is hardened wood tied to bronze gear? Please tell me modular equipment is heading towards being able to use hardened wood with crude rocks. Then we can get into different stats for different types of wood.

Crude repairs not visual. I think you guys know about this one. Interesting that durability potion works but only on z placed tools. That's most likely a carry over from the old?

When I was repairing some of my crude tools I was wondering would it make more sense to hold the pebbles? I dunno.

Odds and ends:
I noticed similar voxels attracting and merging into one. nice.

Sharp plants, cacti, etc... doing damage. THANK YOU. This change is a good step towards survival mode being about surviving. Plus: Fireplace and stone furnace could be additional environmental hazards when lit. Another would be the geyser with the steam. On a different note, what are the geyser's all about?

After cutting up a lotus teeth plant, I z placed the teeth however to no avail with still being damaged on contact.

OMG THE CABBAGE TRAP PLANT ATE MY COGAT. YOU MONSTERS!

I'm impressed by the clean up on the way trees fall. very good.

The different pickup timers for different objects. nice.

From a brief play with settings I couldn't notice a difference between small, normal, and far view distances... but perhaps that was just me.

Crystals with there lighting vs rendering inconsistency still bugs me but this has been around for a while. Its probably something that bugs you guys too.

Interesting that you can't breaking down rocks into pebbles (i.e. only cobblestone ->pebbles) but perhaps theres other plans for it. Also, with cobblestone, and I may just have been being blind here but I didn't see the different coloured cobblestone map to there respective textures.

z placement axis locking. I think I've talked about this one before. Using ctrl initially lets to rotate in all directions but straight after a ctrl + shift rotation the ctrl rotation seems to get stuck on an axis.

Inventory stack management. For the times when you only needed one... I dream a little.

I noticed that the Shoulder wraps covered my seeds arms.... yea?

Animals and environmental damage. Kids, kittens and cubs seem quite put off my any environmental damage. interesting.

Why are ores not loot?

Again one that is known, but would love darkness / lighting changes for caves/underground.

Corpse pitcher sound omgosh freaky! cool.

Had a TUG error in console? Something about Corpse pitcher already emitting sound?

Grass voxels are not vegetation? Was trying to use then as fuel for the firepit.

fps spike on pumpkin helmet equip? Might just be me?

Ways to grow leaves and ferns so that I could camouflage my base. I know there's leaves from the cabbage trap so we've got it in the mean time just wanted to be able to do it before bronze age.

Is bearam only in some of the biomes now? Found in wastelands and hills.

IDEA TIME: How about taking the way in which types of tools will interact with terrain just a bit further. For example lets have all types of hammer's affect the geometry such that the resulting geometry would tend towards the average normal for that area of voxels.

IDEA TIME: Left and right click with tools => right click / high energy maps to the bigger voxel modification size and left click / low energy maps to the single voxel size.

That's it for now. Next stop, updating Portal Stone's.

Nekochu

I'll try to answer these as I can.

Rawr said:

Main pieces:
Now for the despawn timer on loot objects. You need to be aware of the following situation because it happened to more than just me. While playing on a multiplayer server, finding a hammer rock was a difficult task because they had already despawned when I entered the world. Not finding a hammer rock means a lot of things can't happen.

We actually do not have a despawn time on specific items like the hammer rock for that very reason. It may have just been bad luck in finding one or we may have a bug we missed but the intention was that these "necessary" items would not have a despawn time when they occurred through generation.

Rawr said:

I found an edge case for loot. I fell onto a large rock part way down a cliff. After breaking the rock I fell down to the bottom but the loot remained suspended on the cliff. I'll leave this one for you guys to say "feature" if you wish.

We have a very strict timer to set the loot objects in place and there will probably be little instances of this where they settle before it seems right. Not sure if there is much of a way to fix this one.

Rawr said:

Ah tools. I feel as though we're intent on playing the durability game. Basically, yes there's now a difference where I'd consider using the axe instead of the hammer to chop down a tree. I'd like to point out though that's mostly because I was paying attention to the small bars at the very bottom of my screen. Imagine if you removed them?

We have an even more intense durability change that did not make it out in this release that really drives home the idea of using the proper tool. We held back on this change due to not having enough time testing it and making sure we're getting enough proper feedback after the change. But expect more adjustments to tool and durability in the future.

Rawr said:

I started wondering to myself, why is hardened wood tied to bronze gear? Please tell me modular equipment is heading towards being able to use hardened wood with crude rocks. Then we can get into different stats for different types of wood.

Someday we'll get those modular tool working right!

Rawr said:

Crude repairs not visual. I think you guys know about this one. Interesting that durability potion works but only on z placed tools. That's most likely a carry over from the old?

Yes, it is a little bug that popped up with the new loot system that we just did not get a fix for in time.

Rawr said:

When I was repairing some of my crude tools I was wondering would it make more sense to hold the pebbles? I dunno.

Probably something in a future user experience pass, just to make all of the types of ways to do things consistent. Right now though, for repairs, you can have a repair agent and a repair tool or a combination of both. For crude tools, you only need the agent, the loose pebbles. While for bronze tool, you need the repair tool, the hammer.

Rawr said:

I noticed similar voxels attracting and merging into one. nice.

Part of the new loot system. Although it does has its issues and needs further work.

Rawr said:

Sharp plants, cacti, etc... doing damage. THANK YOU. This change is a good step towards survival mode being about surviving. Plus: Fireplace and stone furnace could be additional environmental hazards when lit. Another would be the geyser with the steam. On a different note, what are the geyser's all about?

We still need to add in some more elements to this, as what you had mentioned with the resourced not being damaging, like the leaves or thorns from the plant. Still work to be done! Also the geysers are just something aesthetic at the moment, to add life to the scenery. But as with all things in the game, they do have a purpose that we'll get to at some point. A purpose that is both dark and sinister.

Rawr said:

OMG THE CABBAGE TRAP PLANT ATE MY COGAT. YOU MONSTERS!

This only happened because you were a terrible pet owner that didn't pay attention to your charge. You really only have yourself to blame.

Rawr said:

I'm impressed by the clean up on the way trees fall. very good.

Just wait, it is going to get even better!

Rawr said:

Interesting that you can't breaking down rocks into pebbles (i.e. only cobblestone ->pebbles) but perhaps theres other plans for it. Also, with cobblestone, and I may just have been being blind here but I didn't see the different coloured cobblestone map to there respective textures.

Use a hammer on one of the rock heads at a table, you'll be able to generate more pebbles in this fashion. Also to obtain the colored cobblestone, you'll need to do some extra cooking and dying.

Rawr said:

z placement axis locking. I think I've talked about this one before. Using ctrl initially lets to rotate in all directions but straight after a ctrl + shift rotation the ctrl rotation seems to get stuck on an axis.

Inventory stack management. For the times when you only needed one... I dream a little.

Yeah, I want this fixed. Our next big push on user experience will be to fix up a lot of these Z-placement issues since that part of the game is paramount with the changes to loot objects and placement.

Rawr said:

I noticed that the Shoulder wraps covered my seeds arms.... yea?

A grammatical change by one of our new designers, since technically they go into the "shoulder" slot on the gear screen. Even though they appear on the arms...

Rawr said:

Animals and environmental damage. Kids, kittens and cubs seem quite put off my any environmental damage. interesting.

They're getting better. The AI is getting a lot of love and soon more updates will be passed along.

Rawr said:

Why are ores not loot?

They are spawned from voxels, which technically drops loot in the same fashion as objects but they engine still handles it differently. One of those bugs we just did not have time to fix.

Rawr said:

Corpse pitcher sound omgosh freaky! cool.

Thanks! I would love to have a full time sound designer but in the meantime you get me. That is when I get the time to do it too!

Rawr said:

Had a TUG error in console? Something about Corpse pitcher already emitting sound?

Ahh yes, I late bug we caught after the launch. We'll have a fix for it in the next release.

Rawr said:

Grass voxels are not vegetation? Was trying to use then as fuel for the firepit.

Might be a bug. Did you try to add it as the fire pit is active? Vegetation only fuels an already active fire pit.

Rawr said:

Ways to grow leaves and ferns so that I could camouflage my base. I know there's leaves from the cabbage trap so we've got it in the mean time just wanted to be able to do it before bronze age.

Yes, I want everything to be growable at some point. We're working towards that.

Rawr said:

Is bearam only in some of the biomes now? Found in wastelands and hills.

He has his favored biomes. Try finding him in the piney woods and bedrock biomes as well as polar.

Rawr said:

IDEA TIME: How about taking the way in which types of tools will interact with terrain just a bit further. For example lets have all types of hammer's affect the geometry such that the resulting geometry would tend towards the average normal for that area of voxels.

Interesting, we'll look at this with the balance pass being done on the durability of tools.

Rawr said:

IDEA TIME: Left and right click with tools => right click / high energy maps to the bigger voxel modification size and left click / low energy maps to the single voxel size.

This is another reason for moving actions off of the primary and secondary mouse clicks, to add in more features like this.

Thanks for all the great feedback! I hope we can keep pushing forward to get some of these items taken care of!

Rawr

Most excellent!

Yea, that last one there with the left and right clicks, I'm gonna try take a step back and think about the where, how and why's. It'll be for my design post though.