Game Development: Bony Antvatar

Announcements about major changes in Haven & Hearth.

Re: Game Development: Bony Antvatar

Postby jorb » Tue Jun 26, 2018 10:10 am

NOOBY93 wrote:probably look like trash and take way too much time


There are other algorithms I'd write before that one.

In total we're talking about a task -- creating skeletons -- which is fairly complex to describe, but relatively fast to actually perform, and which will only need to be performed around, idk 50-100 times total, depending of course on how many skeletons we want to add. There is very little genereality in the operation, as it is an artistic decision what to include from the live animal in terms of bone details such as horns and antlers and whatever, that any sort of script to perform the operation would have to be modified per animal to the point where it's practically hand made anyway. The walrus, for example, has the flipperbone added into it, which is an entirely unique specification not shared with any other animal. I also do a lot of little vertex adjustments and sculpts to fit bone details together, and to place the skeleton decently agains the ground and such, and none of that lends itself well to a general implementation.
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Re: Game Development: Bony Antvatar

Postby Granger » Tue Jun 26, 2018 10:32 am

loftar wrote:
waga wrote:Alright , they do listen.

Just for the record, I'd like to say that I pushed for the clay change precisely because I tried to listen. :)

People were complaining about Potter's Clay being broken, and when we tried but failed to fix it in the prior patch, the only complaints were that we failed, not that we shouldn't have tried.

Maybe, in the future, you could present your userbase with next we want to make the following, please give feedback on this exact mechanic before we sink time into something you'll hate and/or is broken beyond repair?

Something like this (instead of we made the following, have fun with it after the fact) could help avoid introducing broken mechanics in the first place...

You have a dedicated fanbase, why no harvest their brains (well, at least the thoughts they willingly share) when it makes most sense?
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Re: Game Development: Bony Antvatar

Postby loftar » Tue Jun 26, 2018 4:12 pm

Granger wrote:Maybe, in the future, you could present your userbase with next we want to make the following, please give feedback on this exact mechanic before we sink time into something you'll hate and/or is broken beyond repair?

Well, in this case there was extremely little time sunk into the implementation, and also no real harm come from it, since a nerf doesn't create any lingering effects and can be easily reverted (as was done).

Also, I find that we very often get much better feedback when we actually try something, rather than just speculate about it.
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Re: Game Development: Bony Antvatar

Postby Ardennesss » Tue Jun 26, 2018 5:21 pm

loftar wrote:
Granger wrote:Maybe, in the future, you could present your userbase with next we want to make the following, please give feedback on this exact mechanic before we sink time into something you'll hate and/or is broken beyond repair?

Well, in this case there was extremely little time sunk into the implementation, and also no real harm come from it, since a nerf doesn't create any lingering effects and can be easily reverted (as was done).

Also, I find that we very often get much better feedback when we actually try something, rather than just speculate about it.


It's because a large amount of your player base isn't active on the forums. Develop an in-game feedback interface where you can push a feedback poll out to clients on login with a set number of options and a comment box to give feedback on proposed changes. It would be unobtrusive and allow all the players who don't actively browse the forums to give their feedback, you could even attached the data to the stats of the character they're doing the poll on to allow you to only review feedback from players in certain levels of progression.

However, I'm going to have to disagree with you because any forum thread that you make regarding upcoming mechanic changes will definitely get feedback if the community disagrees, we can even tell you potential issues it's going to cause that you might not have foreseen. For example, the changes to animals being able to destroy objects while fleeing now - was immediately identified as a way to grief players using round pole fence inner gates and the community had to immediately adjust and build inner palisades to stop this from happening.
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Re: Game Development: Bony Antvatar

Postby loftar » Tue Jun 26, 2018 5:36 pm

Ardennesss wrote:For example, the changes to animals being able to destroy objects while fleeing now - was immediately identified as a way to grief players using round pole fence inner gates and the community had to immediately adjust and build inner palisades to stop this from happening.

Hadn't heard about that, but if that is the case, then that's a bug rather than an oversight. Will have to investigate.

EDIT: Having investigated, I can indeed not reproduce that. Are you sure you didn't just test on your own claims?
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Re: Game Development: Bony Antvatar

Postby Ardennesss » Tue Jun 26, 2018 7:05 pm

loftar wrote:
Ardennesss wrote:EDIT: Having investigated, I can indeed not reproduce that. Are you sure you didn't just test on your own claims?


Is there a coded hard stop that prevents an animal from choosing a gate as a path to destroy? I don't see why aggroing a bear into the gap between a round-pole and the palisade and then blocking it in with players wouldn't work, eventually it would try to path through the gate (and presumably bash it.)
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Re: Game Development: Bony Antvatar

Postby MagicManICT » Tue Jun 26, 2018 7:58 pm

Ardennesss wrote:It's because a large amount of your player base isn't active on the forums. Develop an in-game feedback interface where you can push a feedback poll out to clients on login with a set number of options and a comment box to give feedback on proposed changes.

I can tell you that in 20+ years of game testing, customer service, and a bunch of other crap... if people don't bother reading the forums, they're not going to bother reading pop-ups. People are just as likely to ignore pop-ups as they are to not bother coming to the forum to express opinions.

Are in-game feedback loops better than relying on the forums? Sure, and they have been proven to be more reliable, but only when you have a significant sized community. It's been a while since I've read up on implementations of such things, but mostly it's because the bigger the community, the fewer voices get heard as a percentage of the total player base.

Also add in that this is a very international community. A lot of the players can't communicate with each other because they don't speak each others' language. Add in that In-game popups cannot be easily translated. (Possibly, if you can copy-paste into a translator.)
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Re: Game Development: Bony Antvatar

Postby Ardennesss » Tue Jun 26, 2018 8:05 pm

I wasn't presenting the idea as a panacea that's guaranteed to fix the issue, just as an alternative to relying on the forums. If the claim is that nobody gives feedback via the forums, then an alternative is to gather feedback inside the game itself. Maybe a different alternative could be a Jorb/Loftar stickied feedback request thread where they edit in what they're considering changing and players can check it periodically and throw their two cents in. Patch days at this point just feel like playing the lottery on "How is Jorb going to make my life more difficult today?"
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