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Topic: EQ Next Landmark - It's Like Minecraft But Not™ (Read 332642 times)
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Falconeer
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Posts: 11124
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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Sure to draw some comments from this group. It will be an interesting next 5-10 years for SOE; lots of experimentation. http://smedsblog.com/From his twitter. Our belief at SOE is that it’s smarter to head in this direction now rather than waiting. We want to innovate and let players be a part of everything we do including make the game in the first place. We’re going to take the idea of sandbox gaming and we’re putting it at the core of everything we’re doing. We’ll obviously still be making awesome stuff for players to do, but we’re going to aim very high in terms of letting players be a part of the game systems. The more emergent sandbox style content we can make the less predictable the experience will be.
Smed
So.... Probably not this time around, and almost certainly not SOE and Smed, but I have a hard time thinking five years from now we won't have bigger, more ambitious Minecrafts. Newer, less broken UO/SWG. Or less spread-sheety, less spacey EVEs.
I'm really too lazy to use the search function, but I'll see if Evernote will let me tag this one for laughs. This discussion has been had before. It's always "next time!" or "Well they ALMOST had it! They just needed more time/ focus/ budget/ carrots/ unobtanium" I really feel bad for you sandbox believers sometimes. I guess I was wrong about Smed, you know it's hard to trust the guy, but how's that Evernote thingie working for you Merusk? I'll keep bringing this quotes up for your convenience if you don't mind, in case the search function lets you down...
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Ingmar
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Posts: 19280
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Is this really bigger or more ambitious? It mostly seems to be prettier.
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11124
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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« Last Edit: February 11, 2014, 04:21:25 PM by Falconeer »
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Venkman
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Posts: 11536
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I applaud them trying. They're months away from knowing if this first phase will be successful though. We're still in the phase where the only people experiencing it were willing to cough up $60-100USD just to try it. Slight bias there They have much to do just to develop enough of an experience to be complete enough to review holistically, including proper tools to give feedback. Except for how cool the game is and how pretty the vistas are (I feel like their lighting is way ahead of their textures), considering the wholesale changes coming, there really is very little to comment on. I want them to be right. I willingly paid early what I figured I'd pay later. And I've already gotten a good chunk of that money's worth just on time spent so far. But this is still very much in the early days, so months away from whether "next time" is finally here
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Merusk
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What D. said.
It looks fun, it looks light Landmark might be a thing. It's also a biased selection set of interested parties and lookie-loos and far too early to declare success, much less "victory" for Landmark alone, never mind whatever Next actually turns out to be.
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Kitsune
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Posts: 2406
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The thing is, those still don't work for me, and I'm not sure there's any way to make them work with the creation tools being given to the players. All of the buildings I've seen screenshotted thus far are made of a single texture, and obviously so, which just murders things for me. Whenever I see a building where every wall is Wood_Texture_01, I think $10 discount bin game, not bold new future of gaming.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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I'm sure it will be difficult to add new textures to the alpha.
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Merusk
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Posts: 27449
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Those forums are already showing early signs of becoming a toxic uber vs casual wasteland. Folks asking for a way to alleviate RSI/ Carpal tunnel with a 'click lock' feature for harvesting are being told, "you should go play something else" and "why don't we let the game build for you people too." Awesome. Also, Sjofn, here's a pet peeve thread for you; "Female" requests High Heels for their character & complains about how they're not an option in RPGs often enough. https://forums.station.sony.com/eqnlandmark/index.php?threads/one-word-stilletos.17275/
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The past cannot be changed. The future is yet within your power.
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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Eh, doesn't matter the stage of a game, the oboard community is pretty much always going to be the same. This is the main reason I feel they need to fasttrack the ingame feedback tools. And for those reporting tools being useful, more pulldown menu/checkbox/autocomplete/decision trees, less open text fields that will generate far more words than which there are dev hours to read (especially when the vast majority will likely be duplicate). I'd go full JIRA on the users, and require all fields be selected. That alone will narrow the number of uses of that form, while raising the probability of that feedback being at least thought through a bit. More importanlty, makes aggregating the feedback easier. Just take out the "priority" field
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Signe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 18942
Muse.
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I agree about shoes. The more, the better. And if we don't have shoes on, we should have pretty feet. With polish if we like. And tabi socks so we can mine whilst wearing flip-flops. And these: Those might not be the cutest feet but I ADORE the shoes.
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My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60345
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If anyone wants to be terribly stupid and donate me a Trailblazer's Pack, I will adorn them with a custom title OR let them pick their own title OR let them title someone else (pursuant to mod veto).
Obviously I'll give away the beta keys here on f13.
I don't expect anyone to do this. I should probably just email Smed and ask for a Trailblazer's pack.
Edit: Also, I'll make the name in the credits - "f13.net: BAT COUNTRY" because that's fucking cute or something.
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Nyght
Terracotta Army
Posts: 538
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smedsblog.com Probably as close as we'll get to UO days crossroads or SWG beta forums. Smed seems to be trying to carry the water here. Lead seems pretty quiet. Personally note: not playing, just reading. Not in until beta and probably not then either due systems reqs and my lack of desire to rebuild my box with 100 or so mostly tiny obscure apps.
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"Do you know who is in charge here?" -- "Yep."
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Numtini
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Posts: 7675
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Those forums are already showing early signs of becoming a toxic uber vs casual wasteland. Folks asking for a way to alleviate RSI/ Carpal tunnel with a 'click lock' feature for harvesting are being told, "you should go play something else" and "why don't we let the game build for you people too." The funny part about this is that once the community progresses, none of that will be necessary. Newbie will log in and someone will just make them a top end epic pick and axe.
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If you can read this, you're on a board populated by misogynist assholes.
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Goreschach
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Posts: 1546
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If you craft one of the range extender items(not area extender), you can consistently chop down the huge trees.
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kaid
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3113
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Is this really bigger or more ambitious? It mostly seems to be prettier.
It is pretty but the underlying part of everything in the game is interactable and potentially destroyable or buildable. Anything you see the devs make you could potentially make yourself in your game. That is some very very ambitious stuff right there they may stumble in the end but really this is a pretty incredible leap forward and the fact that it still looks damn pretty says amazing things about their voxel engine. Even if SOE stumbles I think this attempt will if nothing else push other companies to try something similar so if SOE does not do it they I think are at least moving the bar forwards.
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kaid
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3113
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The thing is, those still don't work for me, and I'm not sure there's any way to make them work with the creation tools being given to the players. All of the buildings I've seen screenshotted thus far are made of a single texture, and obviously so, which just murders things for me. Whenever I see a building where every wall is Wood_Texture_01, I think $10 discount bin game, not bold new future of gaming.
Well on the wood part there are actually I think at least 10 maybe more textures for plain wood about the same for burrled wood and then stripped wood as well. Each material has at least one texture and many have 10+ textures available. That people are making pretty simple buildings is more of a case of people just starting to play around with stuff than a lack of the game engine even in its basic level of functionality.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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If you craft one of the range extender items(not area extender), you can consistently chop down the huge trees.
I only found that to be a problem with the newbie pickaxe. They say it's a top tier axe (but copper pick), but the range sucks. Built my iridium or w/e pick last night and it's pretty sweet. Continues my streak of every other pick being blue quality, diameter in the 220s, speed almost 90 str I forget but maybe 140s? As far as what Kitsune is saying, it's only correct in that yes any creative tool will lead to thousands of mediocre creations and a few nice ones. This is not anything new or unexpected. And this is quite early in development to complain about the amount of textures available, and they definitely need to expand on this asap but to say all the buildings are a single texture (and obviously so!) is trolling. Even if I wanted to play that game, there is wood and stone. But in reality, there are other stones, gems, metals, woods people haven't used much due to rarity and usefulness in crafting. Everyone has tons of granite and plain wood, so that's what most people build with right now. And they each have ten textures per material, though a few are fairly same-y. Smed isn't the only one carrying the water, Georgeson is fairly active on twitter to the point that I set up a damned twit account. Michaels is also pretty active and obviously Domino is. McPherson isn't quite as active but does post a bit. Butler's been a bit quiet but I think that's partly due to the roadmap they'll be unveiling today. They're mostly using twitter and facebook, I don't know if those guys even post on the forums, I got tired of wading through the nonsense there quite quickly. edit: top of last night's wishlist: That all brush shapes scaled down to the smallest cube size. Trying to make gothic window peaks, ecch. Also that larger scaled volumes (like using a 2x2 cube) would correctly give sizes in smallest cube units. If I have a 4x4 cube and stretch it what I consider 8 units, it says '2 voxels'.
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« Last Edit: February 12, 2014, 07:34:18 AM by Sky »
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Falconeer
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11124
a polyamorous pansexual genderqueer born and living in the wrong country
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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So yeah. New SOE. It's their game to lose, really.
Also, twitter sucks for verbose people!
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Signe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 18942
Muse.
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You have a circle?
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My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
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tazelbain
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6603
tazelbain
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So yeah. New SOE. It's their game to lose, really.
Also, twitter sucks for verbose people!
I am sure Smed is sitting in the back waiting for his chance to jack things up.
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"Me am play gods"
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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New props today per DG.
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Furiously
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7199
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You have a circle?
I think he has fans!
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palmer_eldritch
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1999
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I logged on last night and spent my time just wandering around looking at what other people have done. It's almost depressing to see some of the best creations because they're so much better than mine. I enjoyed looking around though.
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Ingmar
Terracotta Army
Posts: 19280
Auto Assault Affectionado
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Is this really bigger or more ambitious? It mostly seems to be prettier.
It is pretty but the underlying part of everything in the game is interactable and potentially destroyable or buildable. Anything you see the devs make you could potentially make yourself in your game. That is some very very ambitious stuff right there they may stumble in the end but really this is a pretty incredible leap forward and the fact that it still looks damn pretty says amazing things about their voxel engine. Even if SOE stumbles I think this attempt will if nothing else push other companies to try something similar so if SOE does not do it they I think are at least moving the bar forwards. Well - that doesn't seem to be bigger or more ambitious than Minecraft which was the particular comment I was responding to. I could have made that more clear. Adding a RNG crafting grind to tools also doesn't seem to be a step forward but I will try to reserve judgement until I can actually play it when open beta hits.
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« Last Edit: February 12, 2014, 11:31:14 AM by Ingmar »
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The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT. Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
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Chimpy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10618
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You have a circle?
It's a hippie Mountain Man drum guitar circle!
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'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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Is this really bigger or more ambitious? It mostly seems to be prettier.
It is pretty but the underlying part of everything in the game is interactable and potentially destroyable or buildable. Anything you see the devs make you could potentially make yourself in your game. That is some very very ambitious stuff right there they may stumble in the end but really this is a pretty incredible leap forward and the fact that it still looks damn pretty says amazing things about their voxel engine. Even if SOE stumbles I think this attempt will if nothing else push other companies to try something similar so if SOE does not do it they I think are at least moving the bar forwards. Well - that doesn't seem to be bigger or more ambitious than Minecraft which was the particular comment I was responding to. I could have made that more clear. Adding a RNG crafting grind to tools also doesn't seem to be a step forward but I will try to reserve judgement until I can actually play it when open beta hits. It depends on which MC you mean. If you mean launch vanilla MC, then yes, it's more ambitious in intent, even if just-now-Alpha form is currently less capable. But if you mean the entirety of what MC has become including first party modes and updates and third party corrollary businesses, it's less ambitious. I say "less" not as a value judgement though, just an insight that their business goal is different from Mojang's. - MC might as well be open-source for how extensible it is, with a simple one time upfront fee being their entire revenue source (unless there's residuals I don't know about). What MC has become is far more than anything Mojang has any control over.
- SOE meanwhile is creating a vertically integrated business that controls the options a user has for the purposes of a centrally-managed business with ongoing revenue.
In other words, SOE is trying to tap into a consumer trend with their own rules while MC basically was the foundation of a trend. So, less ambitious is maybe not as accurate as just saying "different businesses".
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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The thing is, those still don't work for me, and I'm not sure there's any way to make them work with the creation tools being given to the players. All of the buildings I've seen screenshotted thus far are made of a single texture, and obviously so, which just murders things for me. Whenever I see a building where every wall is Wood_Texture_01, I think $10 discount bin game, not bold new future of gaming.
Livestream going on just prior to the scheduled downtime. Coincidentally (why I quoted this post), tne thing revealed right away is today's patch includes sandstone textures and stucko.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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They just mentioned the team is working on 'attached claims' (working name), the ability to attach a second claim to yours in the buffer space.
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Venkman
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Posts: 11536
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Today's Patch Notes. Mostly bugs and some exploit fixes, but does include new textures and new props.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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So far the two big patches I've been through have fixed a laundry list of stuff that's been bugging me. This is unprecedented in 17 years of mmo testing. Though the plants and sand fixes didn't work.
On the other hand DG put that right out on twitter right after the servers came up. This is so weird. Earlier today an assoc. producer I follow was fielding requests for building hints. And while he couldn't help me with my quest for 4 voxel wide gothic window arches, he did mention that small is better handled by props, and that windows will be in soon (as props). So there's a bit of a window (haha) into how they're going to handle some of the issues we've seen at the small end of building things where voxel granularity breaks down.
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Ginaz
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Posts: 3534
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Fuck you guys for making this sound like it might actually be good. Just bought my way into the alpha. Edit: And now it won't finish downloading. 404 error. Lovely.
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« Last Edit: February 13, 2014, 01:44:16 AM by Ginaz »
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Venkman
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11536
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Heh yea that was me two weeks ago. Tempted enough to try but the SOE billing system wouldn't let me in. It's a nice reminder of the old days, but also insight into how willing we are to cut them some slack because they're literally trying something new Which can be said for anyone investing in a KS or that silly space based ponzi scheme. Except we can play parts of our promise right now So far the two big patches I've been through have fixed a laundry list of stuff that's been bugging me. This is unprecedented in 17 years of mmo testing. Though the plants and sand fixes didn't work.
On the other hand DG put that right out on twitter right after the servers came up. This is so weird. Earlier today an assoc. producer I follow was fielding requests for building hints. And while he couldn't help me with my quest for 4 voxel wide gothic window arches, he did mention that small is better handled by props, and that windows will be in soon (as props). So there's a bit of a window (haha) into how they're going to handle some of the issues we've seen at the small end of building things where voxel granularity breaks down.
Nice. Decided to de-claim for a few nights while I built up to the Selection and Smooth tools. I have nothing anywhere close to a handle on the latter Was jerking around with gem-based lattice work last night and spent more time undoing than doing. I feel like a need a haptic glove or one of those 3D force feedback joysticks.
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« Last Edit: February 13, 2014, 05:26:37 AM by Darniaq »
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kaid
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3113
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So far the two big patches I've been through have fixed a laundry list of stuff that's been bugging me. This is unprecedented in 17 years of mmo testing. Though the plants and sand fixes didn't work.
On the other hand DG put that right out on twitter right after the servers came up. This is so weird. Earlier today an assoc. producer I follow was fielding requests for building hints. And while he couldn't help me with my quest for 4 voxel wide gothic window arches, he did mention that small is better handled by props, and that windows will be in soon (as props). So there's a bit of a window (haha) into how they're going to handle some of the issues we've seen at the small end of building things where voxel granularity breaks down.
Hehe ya the ents fought back but apparently they are taking another stab at them tonight. The new props are pretty nice the stone tables work awesome in my pyramid of doom. I have to say though they seem like they have their priorities correct on what fixes they gun for and the order they are gunning for them. Kinda sad the sandstone stuff did not go in as I am very curious of the textures as they may look really nice on my pyramid.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Domino (@pentapod) has an interesting background on her twitter page...given the mention of how they're pushing to get the caves in. It's a three level concept of the current island biome with what looks like a second full biome sized cave...and then a third full biome magma/hell cave...That could be pretty awesome, especially if you could get a claim on each biome and maybe install teleporters between them...
A bit laggy last night but I think they tweaked up the ruby spawn a bit, I was able to find a bunch in my short playtime, as well as some alabaster. Anyone seen mithril?
DQ, yeah I don't recommend even bothering with building until you get the Select tool. I've made a few suggestions on improving it as it's just so much more pleasant of a building experience. As powerful and useful as pasting is, it's so difficult to align things I'm also constantly undoing. I think they're going to tweak the way the add/paste moves as the camera moves, but until then I suggest getting to know the scale/rotate/move mousewheel stuff (shift-tab/tab). It made building a two story staircase way more tolerable.
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