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Afraid of Audio posted:Perhaps we could speculate on this type of thing if they had an update. Hi, have a pretty contemporary dev blog update on how they're ironing out issues with some core infrastructure pieces and are pretty clearly still in alpha.
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Sep 15, 2014 23:22
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XboxPants posted:Isn't balancing numbers (how many hits a block takes to mine, how many hits a monster takes to kill, etc) often one of the later stages of game development? It just feels like that's not really what they're focusing on yet, based on their little daily dev updates. Like, they're still working on "threading issues with C++11 pointers" and creating new basic starter biome types, along with entire other systems like the player-owned stations, so it doesn't worry me that they're not working on tweaking numbers yet. Yup. Step one is programming basic game stuff before even getting the mechanics ironed it. That's like the state engine, player input, menus working, and what not. Step two is getting the pieces of the actual mechanics together. Step three is putting everything together in the semblance of a game. Step four is making everything actually loving work because programs never, ever, ever function properly early in their life. Once you have all that together then you can finally get around to tweaking. But yeah, tweaking the numbers is absolutely the last step from a programming standpoint and generally speaking that step is only tweaking numbers. Adding a new feature could break literally everything. The other issue is that C++ 11 changed a lot of stuff and some of the basic functionality of the language. It sounds to me like they wrote it in an earlier version and are trying to update it because C++ 11 is just so much better.
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Sep 15, 2014 23:25
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Yup. Step one is programming basic game stuff before even getting the mechanics ironed it. That's like the state engine, player input, menus working, and what not. Step two is getting the pieces of the actual mechanics together. Step three is putting everything together in the semblance of a game. Step four is making everything actually loving work because programs never, ever, ever function properly early in their life. Once you have all that together then you can finally get around to tweaking. But yeah, tweaking the numbers is absolutely the last step from a programming standpoint and generally speaking that step is only tweaking numbers. Adding a new feature could break literally everything. That would certainly account for what looks like a huge stall in the development cycle if they're just spending a ton of time updating old code.
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Sep 15, 2014 23:38
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IronicDongz posted:Yeah, mining in this game has always been kind of ludicrously slow for no reason. Makes my loving index finger hurt from holding down m1 constantly. Could be worse, it could be combat in Terraria. The game that didn't believe in autoswing for most weapons. 
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Sep 15, 2014 23:38
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Not to rain on the poo poo-parade, but last nightly I played they took out the row despawning. You still dropped it, but I found all my poo poo over 5 minutes later
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Sep 15, 2014 23:46
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XboxPants posted:That would certainly account for what looks like a huge stall in the development cycle if they're just spending a ton of time updating old code. They hired newer programmers who have been going through the old stuff to better optimize it.
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Sep 15, 2014 23:59
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Vadun posted:You still dropped it,
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Sep 16, 2014 00:09
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So is Starbound a game yet?
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Sep 16, 2014 00:13
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Their core design challenge was always going to be making the infinite worlds feature viable. They haven't done that (yet?). The first feature they should have added when they did the alpha release was a way for people to upload, share, and rate the buildings they create in game. They've got a huge playerbase creating content for them for free, and haven't done a thing about it. Also, people always underrate and underestimate Terraria. I would rank it as one of the best designed games I've ever played.
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Sep 16, 2014 00:15
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The Moon Monster posted:So is Starbound a game yet? nothing wil ever be a game again
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Sep 16, 2014 00:20
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The Moon Monster posted:So is Starbound a game yet? Not til someone mods in a SURGE soda machine. Fully functioning. Ernie Muppari posted:nothing wil ever be a game again Also this.
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Sep 16, 2014 00:20
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The Moon Monster posted:So is Starbound a game yet? It's a vessel for chucklefish to get publisher privileges on steam so they can keep living the dream of free money as long as they don't somehow drag their name up poo poo creek.
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Sep 16, 2014 00:22
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Dang. They at least have the FTL style ship battles in at this point right? How many trees do I need to feed my spaceship to fight off an Apex cruiser?
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Sep 16, 2014 00:27
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this thread is now worse than the starbound forums
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Sep 16, 2014 00:30
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The Moon Monster posted:Dang. They do, but if you want anything other than the lovely starter junker your probably gonna have to spend some IRL Dosh in the ingame store. the drop rates for ship blueprints and the materials to build them is just way WAY too low.
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Sep 16, 2014 00:49
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Whoa, wait, there's FTL style ship battles planned for starbound?
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Sep 16, 2014 01:20
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At this point I'm just waiting on Witchmarsh.
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Sep 16, 2014 01:22
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Literally Kermit posted:Whoa, wait, there's FTL style ship battles planned for starbound? In days of yore the devs mentioned that that was one of their planned features.
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Sep 16, 2014 01:25
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Literally Kermit posted:Whoa, wait, there's FTL style ship battles planned for starbound? Only time I've ever heard that was someone trying to stir up poo poo by making up rumors dozens of pages back.
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Sep 16, 2014 01:26
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One of the devs said that it might be something they'll think about doing, and they said it really, really early on.
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Sep 16, 2014 01:37
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Babe Magnet posted:One of the devs said that it might be something they'll think about doing, and they said it really, really early on. It is interesting how an off-handed musing ages back before/around release about how it would be cool to add something quickly evolved into The Moon Monster posted:In days of yore the devs mentioned that that was one of their planned features.
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Sep 16, 2014 02:23
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I mean it would be pretty badass, but their official stance I think is "There's already FTL combat in a game called FTL. We're going to do something different", but again, that could just be one of the devs replying offhandedly, and their official stance could be "???"
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Sep 16, 2014 02:42
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XboxPants posted:Oh, sure, if you're comparing where Starbound is at now, then Terraria is definitely streets ahead of it in these aspects. But I don't really feel like that comparison gives you any insight into the future of the game, or the strength of the design. terraria inherently let you grind for ore and still hit most of the content
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Sep 16, 2014 03:12
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Literally Kermit posted:Whoa, wait, there's FTL style ship battles planned for starbound? New biome: fireworks factory.
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Sep 16, 2014 05:33
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Magmarashi posted:It is interesting how an off-handed musing ages back before/around release about how it would be cool to add something quickly evolved into Well hey I guess in cases like this you can't count something as a planned feature just because the developer said here are some features we're planning.
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Sep 16, 2014 11:08
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The Moon Monster posted:Well hey I guess in cases like this you can't count something as a planned feature just because the developer said here are some features we're planning. "Hey, it would be kinda cool" is not "We are planning this as a feature, count on it and keep us to it!" That was literally the entire point of my post that you just quoted and didn't even read.
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Sep 16, 2014 11:12
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The Moon Monster posted:Well hey I guess in cases like this you can't count something as a planned feature just because the developer said here are some features we're planning. He literally said that it definitely wouldn't be a feature of the main game and was just something he thought would make a cool expansion after the game came out, but they had to finish the entire rest of the game first. But go ahead and talk out your rear end without having any idea what you're saying.
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Sep 16, 2014 11:27
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Captain Gordon posted:this thread is now worse than the starbound forums Well yeah. Rrussom stopped posting there regularly
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Sep 16, 2014 11:37
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When I came to this thread long ago, it was full of naive doe-eyed posters eagerly awaiting the next update. I like it better now. Hating stuff is way more entertaining.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:06
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various cheeses posted:I like it better now. Hating stuff is way more entertaining.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:17
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Jackard posted:Only if you put some effort into it. GBS had this thread in a death grip ever since the secret forum nonsense Well it's certainly better than before, when a goon made a well-drawn comic submission that had an old Hylotl mom as a sterotypical Asian mom and people were knocking each other down to wring their hands about how it was racially insensitive. Hey at least it isn't like MWO though, where the devs actually hated goons and went out of their way to reject our opinions.
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Sep 16, 2014 15:24
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Sep 16, 2014 15:59
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NotALizardman posted:Except that their new progression path keeps certain planets locked unless you progress to the next tier and those planets are generally the more interesting ones. The new garden world starter planets are, by all accounts, boring flat grassy plains with trees. And the only way to escape is to spend an hour tediously mining up the sparse copper, then making a pickaxe so you can go back and grab those deposits of iron you missed and make another pick out of that, then you have to mine to the center of your starting planet to get core fragments to fix your ship. Mining to the center of a planet in a game where mining is not only slow, but boring. I've been watching Starbound's development since it was announced, and I have 500 hours in Terraria because I love the genre. I watch with an  expression, because all I see is poor development choices that CF keeps doubling down on.The first sign I remember going wrong was "It will take a full minute to warp places". People said "won't that become kinda tedious after a while? Well maybe we can mod it out" and CF doubled down, making it almost impossible to mod out (on a highly mod-capable platform). But in practice, that didn't turn out so bad, right...? The Matter Manipulator is slow garbage, and mining sucks, so some people made beamaxe mods that dramatically improve it (obviously past the point of being broken, but you could modify it to taste). But CF breaks the mod and then makes it so that the game crashes out if you try to remake it. If you damage more than "too many" tiles, the game desyncs and kicks you out. On a highly mod-capable platform. People say caveman mode is boring and a sci-fi game with teleporters and laser guns shouldn't spend the first two hours dicking around with stone pickaxes, so CF makes garden worlds where you have to dick around with garbage pickaxes for even longer. Then you upgrade to drills which are still annoying and awful. I want to see Starbound grow into the Ur-Terraria it could have been, but the development team seems bound and determined to make it a grindfest. They want you to have fun only on their terms alone.
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Sep 16, 2014 17:17
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Evilreaver posted:I've been watching Starbound's development since it was announced, and I have 500 hours in Terraria because I love the genre. I watch with an Yes, we actively went out of our way to break mods because
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Sep 16, 2014 17:25
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Evilreaver posted:The first sign I remember going wrong was "It will take a full minute to warp places". People said "won't that become kinda tedious after a while? Well maybe we can mod it out" and CF doubled down, making it almost impossible to mod out (on a highly mod-capable platform). But in practice, that didn't turn out so bad, right...? Is that actually a thing? I always figured the long warp time was a clever way of hiding the fact that it has to generate a new world. But I only played ~20 hours on release and am waiting for the (someday eventual) full release to play again, so I've missed 98% of the drama. 
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Sep 16, 2014 17:26
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Supernorn posted:Yes, we actively went out of our way to break mods because Okay, so why did the game start desyncing after the beamaxe mod became popular, and to re-enable it you had to modify 3 different files (rather than just the beamaxe file)? I mean, I honestly can't think of another explanation. That's not something that happens by accident, a bug. Ambaire posted:I figured out why now changing pickaxe etc blockRadius to 8 or above 'crashes' your game. It seems that in the last major patch, there was a change so that if the game detects a player is attempting to damage more than x blocks, they're forcibly disconnected from the game, even in singleplayer. It's not 'the game needs this limit to be stable' since it can still be deactivated safely. So what is the explanation? Evilreaver fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 17:30
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Fintilgin posted:I always figured the long warp time was a clever way of hiding the fact that it has to generate a new world.
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Sep 16, 2014 17:32
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Supernorn posted:Yes, we actively went out of our way to break mods because you bastards i can see you all evilly petting a fluffy white cat right now
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Sep 16, 2014 17:32
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Evilreaver posted:Okay, so why did the game start desyncing after the beamaxe mod became popular, and to re-enable it you had to modify 3 different files (rather than just the beamaxe file)? Makes sense to me? The base game would generally not have you damaging huge amounts of tiles, so if that happens, it's probably not supposed to be happening, so disconnect the player as it's likely some sort of desync or cheating going on. If you want to mod it in, go and change the files? Storing the same variable in two places is confusing but not unusual, Skyrim does that with a lot of its variables, usually it's just programmers being redundant or the game trying to keep backups or something. I think disregard for modding is more likely to be the issue than intentional sabotage. Which is fine? I mean, if you had to pussyfoot around so as not to break mods you'd never get anything done.
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Sep 16, 2014 17:41
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Supernorn posted:Yes, we actively went out of our way to break mods because but the one point out of that I very much agree with is, why the gently caress is it so grindy? why was it made even more grindy? why is mining so loving slow? I mean obviously this is stuff that can change fairly easily but, to me, it kinda seems like the dev team in general thinks that mining works fine right now. which I can't describe as anything but nuts, jesus gently caress it takes so LONG
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Sep 16, 2014 17:47
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