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It's 2019 and I'm downloading Cube World from Steam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXyBVbryR9M What the hell is Cube World? Cast your mind back eight years. It's 2011, and the indie scene is well established. Tarn Adams has been working on Dwarf Fortress full time for five years; Notch founded Mojang the previous December. Konjak has announced this new "Iconoclasts" project and he thinks it might take him a while; N has had console ports. We are at this point well accustomed to giving money to unknown weirdos on the internet (the Kickstarter boom would begin early next year). In Germany, a man possessed of the actual, honest to God name "Wolfram von Funck" has begun tooling around with something that looks a little like Minecraft. He posts little videos and screenshots on blogspot; people like it. They like it a lot. The game is gorgeous, a bright, vibrant world of voxel trees and voxel people, wandering around with voxel swords. You can hang-glide and fight giant turtle dinosaurs that spin and dodge roll around the place like they're auditioning for a part in Dark Souls. It looks adorable. People want to play it- but progress is slow. Progress is glacial, in fact; two years pass and updates come in dribs and drabs. It quickly becomes obvious to anyone paying attention that von Funck is operating on Adams time: we could be waiting for this one for decades or more. But still, people want to play it. They really want to play it. And eventually, von Funck relents. It's not finished yet, but if you don't mind that and have $20 to burn, he'll let you dick about with the alpha (Steam had just formalised the concept of "Early Access"). This is a mistake. The game gets a lot of good publicity and a lot of people buy in. The game is big, and beautiful, and very, very empty. People are left wanting, and they're not best pleased when updates fail to materialise. von Funck, it seems, has been planning to muddle on doing the same old von Funck thing in the same old von Funck way: slowly. But what could charitably have been described as endearing in a small-time coder working on his passion project part-time is suddenly less agreeable in a man who has taken your money in exchange for services you do not feel have been adequately rendered. People get rowdy. Worse, the good buzz around the initial launch attracts some roils the fun-time crew at 4chan, and shortly after launch von Funck's home-rolled storepage is DDoS'd. He takes this poorly. After a single post-launch update, months later, sales are discontinued and he ceases communication. For all intents and purposes the project appears to be abandoned. There are a few signs of activity- von Funck pops up now and again to post a few new screenshots, videos, but now they seem more like images from a dream you once had than anything anyone might ever get to play. But now it is 2019, and I'm downloading Cube World from Steam. Is this Minecraft? It's blocky, and there is some limited crafting, but no. Unless something has changed, this is not a builder game. This is voxel procgen Breath of the Wild. Lots of exploring, lots of monster slaying, lots of hang-gliding. Multiplayer, possibly. I bought this in 2013 Good news: if you log into the Picroma site (https://picroma.com/) you will be able to redeem a Steam key for the new beta version which is out tomorrow (the 23rd of September). I'm assuming you'll also get the final release version (supposedly out on the 30th). I'm still mad That's fair. I'm generally more sympathetic to Wollay then I think a lot of goons were, but nobody could claim the alpha and the clusterfuck that followed wasn't spectacularly mishandled. I'm hoping we can talk about this new beta here without that completely taking over the thread, though. No Win 7 support?! Yup. That game you bought two months before the release of Win 8.1 no longer supports Windows 7. Why? It relies on an audio engine that only supports 8 and up. Some kind soul has already devised a workaround, but as the game isn't actually out yet no one knows how well it works. Bummer! So what's new?  I guess we're going to find out tomorrow, I don't think there's a comprehensive change list anywhere. Some guy made a video about all the stuff Wollay's been talking about working on over the years, so watch that maybe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1uZbs681no The dynamic questlines stuff seems like the most substantial addition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpB_A5carcQ And here's a recent gameplay video for good measure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD5tYA13XT4 Looks like Cube World. I didn't buy this in 2019. Should I buy it now? No one has laid hands on this in six years. We don't really know what's improved or by how much. We also don't know whether von Funck is going to stick around and deliver regular updates this time. For what it's worth, the game in 2013 generally ran smoothly and without crashing. It wasn't janky- honestly, it was remarkably robust- it was just empty. The world is enormous- infinitely enormous, as far as I know. So long as you keep exploring it'll keep generating new places for you to explore. But the big content draws- rudimentary dungeons, boss monsters- were fairly thin on the ground, and the world was so large and it took so long to get anywhere that it was quite easy to miss what was there. If you're the sort of person who just likes to chill and roam around a big pretty world then you'll have fun, that I can guarantee you. Anything else- it's a big question mark. But it's been six years and Wollay is legendarily release-shy, so I think we can safely assume he thinks he has something worth playing.
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Sep 22, 2019 22:28
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There's almost no way this is any good and I am unreasonably excited for it.
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Sep 22, 2019 22:55
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I don't know how it could be anything but good considering the version we had before was already good. I doubt the game got worse.
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Sep 22, 2019 23:19
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DatonKallandor posted:I don't know how it could be anything but good considering the version we had before was already good. I doubt the game got worse. I don't imagine it got worse but I have to imagine a certain like, temporal alchemy has occurred where this game in particular is concerned. What I liked about it so much then might just be staid and empty now. I hope very much that I'm wrong.
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Sep 22, 2019 23:32
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Orv posted:I don't imagine it got worse but I have to imagine a certain like, temporal alchemy has occurred where this game in particular is concerned. What I liked about it so much then might just be staid and empty now. Well, I guess we'll all know in about seven hours. I am usually awake at three anyhow. The longer you watch the main menu on the current Steam release, the more stuff you will see. Just looking at it is giving me "oh, I want to go over there and see what that is" vibes.
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Sep 23, 2019 00:57
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I'm trying to reconstruct the cadre of friends I had at the time that all bought into it and get them to activate it on steam post hate. It may be a disappointment, but still, gotta see it through.
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Sep 23, 2019 01:03
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Despite the emptiness of the Alpha it still gave me a solid amount of fun, more so than many substantially pricier games have. Most of all, the combat and character control were extremely tight and satisfying, so unless there's been significant degradation there I expect this to be good fun. Quite excited for later today.
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Sep 23, 2019 01:14
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Inepta Lacerta posted:Despite the emptiness of the Alpha it still gave me a solid amount of fun, more so than many substantially pricier games have. Most of all, the combat and character control were extremely tight and satisfying, so unless there's been significant degradation there I expect this to be good fun. In my memory it’s kind of sloppy and weightless, but it’s been so long i don’t know if I can trust myself. I’m going to be at work when it launches 
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Sep 23, 2019 01:44
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I would not describe the combat as 'tight' at all, no.
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Sep 23, 2019 02:00
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Orv posted:I would not describe the combat as 'tight' at all, no. I'll have to concede I might well be misremembering then, it's been a few years since I last played. I do remember having a lot of fun with it still, though. Come to think of it, I think I primarily played ranged classes, which might explain at least in part my memories. Or I'm simply growing forgetful as I age. 
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Sep 23, 2019 06:44
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the beta is active. I have no idea what I'm doing. Everything kills me in like 2 hits and I can't find any towns.
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Sep 23, 2019 08:23
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Yeah I don't want to jump to any hard conclusions but I think this may not only have gotten worse but significantly so? XP and skill trees appear to be missing entirely, the difficulty tuning (admittedly an issue originally but worse now) is hilariously hosed and if you don't spawn by a town you just seem boned.
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Sep 23, 2019 08:45
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Yeah... That's disappointing. I'm hoping some of this stuff can be tuned during the beta period but some of these other changes seem like something that should probably have had feedback during development. Stuff like equipment based progression for any action rpg
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Sep 23, 2019 09:01
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This is the game that taught me not to trust early access and indie games. It was actually fun when I played it all those years ago. Not going to actually try it again myself. For now 
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Sep 23, 2019 09:03
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I used a bell I found in a house and now I am incorporeal and have no idea what to do.
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Sep 23, 2019 09:06
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I loved this when Minecraft stopped cutting it and was sad when it didn't get enough love Can't wait to see the few hundred bucks I spent on this game finally come around Fun fact this was the first early access game I fell for, it hit everything perfectly, and always cherished what time came out of it. I bought copies for the entire studio I worked at because it was very fun for us when we were developing. Can't wait to see what's become of it.
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Sep 23, 2019 09:09
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Right now the reddit and steam forums seem very unhappy. I wasnt too thrilled with my brief time either. Maybe wait until official release to see how it all shakes out.
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Sep 23, 2019 09:13
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You know the beta period is a grand total of a single week, right? And this dude is a notoriously incredibly slow developer? What you see is what you're getting. MAYBE if there's something absolutely gamebreaking you MIGHT get a patch in a month or two.
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Sep 23, 2019 09:21
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Big issue seems to be a lack of general How To Play information and the game randomly sticking you in areas where you will have issues moving around in. Tinkered around for a bit, each region seems to have several landmarks that have items that will give you buffs for that region (found a pair of climbing boots for increased climb speed and a flute that will let me fly up to floating islands within one region). The store page seems to indicate that there are items you have to find to level up your character (character levels are still a thing, just grinding EXP has been replaced with one-off upgrade items) and other items to level up your class. Biggest suggestion I would have for Wolfram would to have new characters forced start in a town where players can at least get their bearings before running out to explore for poo poo. I do kind of understand the player frustration though, I personally missed the fact that in the 16 min preview trailer that was released that EXP was not a thing (though I don't think they showed any of the level up items..), so my initial wandering around had me wondering if character progression had been disabled for the Beta.
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Sep 23, 2019 09:21
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“Spend six years making a game, forget to implement a tutorial” yeah that sounds about right Eliminating xp grind in favour of upgrade items sounds interesting though, looking forward to trying that out.
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Sep 23, 2019 09:37
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There's a whole bunch of weird decisions people are finding too. Apparently you need to re-earn your glider in each zone. Apparently Gear is stronger in the zone you make it, weaker elsewhere(???) Some of these can be bugs or not fully understood systems of course. Still so... Perplexing. The 2013 version had such a solid foundation to build a good game. Edit: some official newbie tips https://steamcommunity.com/app/1128000/discussions/0/1626286205706684443/
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Sep 23, 2019 09:42
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Sankis posted:There's a whole bunch of weird decisions people are finding too.  So here’s a game that’s all about exploration and roaming around... but let’s layer in some arbitrary restrictions to make that as annoying as possible
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Sep 23, 2019 10:02
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starbound 2?
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Sep 23, 2019 10:59
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^ Has Wollay adopted and then immediately neglect a dog? If not this is still better than Starbound. Are there even towns in this game, I haven't found anything but dungeons filled with monsters that almost instantly kill me.
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Sep 23, 2019 11:04
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The game goes a lot better once you find a town. Apparently the leveling is something that happens after you gear up for a region. Going to the next region is like starting a new game, essentially. Items are region locked, but not every item is. There are + items that don't get weaker when you leave their home region, so the game loop I guess is intended to conquer a region by gearing up in it, finding the level up artifact, and a piece of + gear, then go on to the next. So the levels are more like, I dunno, prestige points than levels? Game is very 2013. It's still fun, and would probably be a blast with friends still, but it needs to do some QoL stuff, like start you in a town and explain things better.
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Sep 23, 2019 12:39
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:
Apparently climbing gloves, boats, riding stuff and gliders you have to re-farm for each region, but some equipment and weapons you get to keep (the pieces marked with a +). The rest you can only use in the region you crafted/found them in. It's pretty dire.  e: actually, it looks like "+" items are still region-locked, just to a larger region
kxZyle fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Sep 23, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2019 13:10
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Huh! I’m not playing the game myself, but reading the reactions has been... Interesting, to say the least. I kinda love the idea of XP being gone and progression being exploration based, but the regional gear locking? That’s... VERY odd to me. Especially when the exploration gear is included. That’s a big “yikes” to me! I could almost say it’s make more sense if it was Exploration Gear or Combat Gear, but instead it sounds like you’re close to starting fresh just for wandering. I already figured that I would be “starting fresh” by making a character with a different job. I can’t say I like the idea of it being a regular feeling brought by exploration. i am tim! fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Sep 23, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2019 13:26
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If I had to guess I’d say they’ve set it up like this because they were struggling to keep things interesting as you increased in power... but it’s a pretty poor solution for that. I’d love to know what the actual rationale is.
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Sep 23, 2019 13:32
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There's a lot of moves for the various classes, but having absolutely no move list is kind of bad. In 6 years of development that really should have come up. Starting in or near a town would have been a pretty good and obvious choice too. Fighting the correct enemies is still fun though, and the progression being based on gear like in Zelda rather than levels has a lot of potential. Just wish skill trees hadn't been one of the casulties of that choice.
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Sep 23, 2019 15:24
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i think the dev should start by forcing the player to spawn in a town (That hasn't been cursed) and see if things are still hell like, i can barely kill a lovely slime i found, anything else murders me, but maybe if I could, like, use some of this plant fiber I found to make better armor to cover my fragile, brittle bones with, but i need a loom and there's no sign of civilization anywhere near my starting area (which is full of hings iwth like three to five times my HP, not counting stuff like wandering necromancers with nearly 20 times as much) besides a farm overrun with moles (which i can't take one on one let alone in groups) and a tower with a hostile skeleton dog on the bottom floor
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Sep 23, 2019 15:56
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also please let the the flims wiszard, like, kite, all the attacks slow its movement down a LOT
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Sep 23, 2019 16:02
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Yeah, this is still definitely Cube World. I scrolled the map around the region until I saw a cluster of colored blocks, and then went there. It wasn't a town, but a graveyard, but none of the ghost monsters bothered me. Found another and it was a town, and finally got a quest -- go get the Spirit Bell from a local mystic forest. Okay, I'll do that. Oh, the forest is over here, kinda bisected by this river; cool, I'll just follow this road. Nope. There are two different mystic forests, one on each side of the river. The one I walked through first was the wrong one, and the site of a pitched three-way battle between some magic-using mobs and some rock-throwing mobs, none of which I could really touch. I eventually got killed when the framerate dropped to 2fps or so, held down E until I respawned. While I was fighting some sheep to get a little money to maybe buy some more armor, some sort of green lozenge monster came up over the hill and one-shot me. A little after that, I took a swing at a frog and he pulled out a laser gun and disintegrated me. Yeah, this is still definitely Cube World.
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Sep 23, 2019 16:05
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I haven't played a lot but crossbow rangers seem OP as gently caress. If you use fully charge the right mouse attack from stealth you can crit for like 200 damage with just the starter crossbow, and you can double that with your shadow copy. Makes killing onions for mushroom skewers pretty easy.
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Sep 23, 2019 16:23
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DatonKallandor posted:I don't know how it could be anything but good considering the version we had before was already good. I doubt the game got worse.
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Sep 23, 2019 16:44
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I'm pretty much in agreement with what has been said already, though my enjoyment of the game went up immensely once I figured out you need to build a 'mana' resource to use your special attacks. I... guess it was like that before, too, but it's been years. A tutorial really would have come in handy here. Also, I don't quite like that resources are so sparse to start with. If anything, at the start is precisely where you need a ton of early-game potions and what not. Once I started building a bit of a kit on my ranger type fellow, this was much less of a problem. Also, there's trees everywhere but I've only found like, one log of wood so far. And I miss raiding the farmers fields. I'm still enjoying myself, but it's certainly not a flawless game at this point, so I hope Wollay keeps on improving it. Haven't had any fps drops or anything myself yet (knock on wood.) atholbrose posted:I scrolled the map around the region until I saw a cluster of colored blocks, and then went there. It wasn't a town, but a graveyard, but none of the ghost monsters bothered me. Found another and it was a town, and finally got a quest -- go get the Spirit Bell from a local mystic forest. Okay, I'll do that. Oh, the forest is over here, kinda bisected by this river; cool, I'll just follow this road. It does put a marker down for quest locations, but you might need to zoom in further as the map gets kinda busy. Would have liked to see thick outlines around important locations to make them pop more. (I realize there's already outlines, so maybe that's confusing. Maybe just larger icons?) Inepta Lacerta fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Sep 23, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2019 17:45
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I'm enjoying this despite its flaws. Bit of a rough start too but I got some decent stuff now. Wonder if we could get a group going to play multiplayer with?
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Sep 23, 2019 17:59
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Is it possible this guy wasn't working on this and just quickly slapped together a "final" version just to make some cash
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Sep 23, 2019 17:59
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I wonder how this will shape up against hytale? When I saw the trailer I assumed it was the same game / devs. Cube world seems to be showing its age looks wise.
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Sep 23, 2019 18:05
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Sep 23, 2019 18:40
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Managed to find a village without too much trouble, though it involved a lot more squinting at the map than should be necessary I feel. Then, feeling safe, I went down into the sewers and very nearly got owned by a slime. Performance problems are real. Cutting down draw distance seems to help a bit, but not as much as I was hoping. Also, at 20% the title screen is almost entirely blue! Managed to find enough cotton to build me some shoulder pads. I guess next I should kill something? E: the performance seems to get worse over time, but it’s not a memory leak. RAM profile is almost slender. I suspect the game is CPU limited, if anything. KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Sep 23, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2019 18:44
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