What use is the latest "upgrade"

[sami1337]

Also I think JTG has hit on something with his comment on Bottleneck being harder to grief. Basically Laketown doesn't have enough regularly online players. We're down to 3 or 4 now, and that's not enough to get any reasonable consistency.

Those of us who DO play, play fairly regularly and achieve some pretty impressive things though. I quite like how our settlement looks and how we've hit a number of "firsts" when new features come out. I also like that we're reasonably well known as a settlement

I guess we won another "first" by being the first to be hit by the downside of the update.

[loftar]

It should be pointed out that the about page has a list of planned features, but it's mostly out of date and doesn't contain everything anyway, and it should also be pointed out that the time it takes to update it would detract from the time to actually develop the game. ;)

One of the main points about our mostly non-methodological approach is that it, simply, makes it more fun for us. We can just do more or less anything we might feel like, and that way development seldomly gets boring (sericulture, for instance, was more or less completely made up during our last dev session; I think Jorb just got inspired from reading about silkworms a few days earlier). Lately, of course, we've had to cram a few other, more boring, things in to prop the balance up one way or another, but that's another issue (though all of it has been good stuff, so it's good that we've finally been forced to do it).

And yes, the thing is also that our list of features that we want to implement sooner or later is so insanely long that we couldn't possible prioritize it.

[KoE]

Huh. I guess I never read (all of) that page, though I distinctly remember the phrase 'the stone axe is the shit'. That was an interesting look into the past at any rate.

I also want to clarify that I didn't mean anything negative about lacking any methodology, and it's always important that there be fun to the development process. I say again, what's been done thus far is amazing and I'm looking forward to the continued ride.

[jorb]

Planned features list:
I also understand the devs intend to include walls. and i think a lot of people are getting annoyed because game balance gets thrown between each update. But i think it would help people if the Devs had a list of planned features to include and their priority for inclusion. So people know what’s coming soon. I know it might be nice to surprise us with a silk worm industry, but for things like locks and walls it would help calm people down.

Quoting the bit about balance being thrown for truth.

Unfortunately, Jorb and Loftar have both repeatedly said that even they don't know what's coming next. As far as I understand, game development, for them, consists of a nebulous string of ideas for the far future* (such as walls, ancestry, etc.) that's still being puzzled over bit by bit and whatever they decide to hash out when they get together for a dev session.

*where far future is defined as 'not today'.

Actually, the more I think about it, it's a small miracle the game isn't a completely jumbled mess given that. (or not any more so than most alphas, at least.)

Tsk, tsk, tsk, young grasshopper. Do not confuse the iterative approach with simple randomness. I have actually had the chance to think quite a bit about methodological approaches to communal processes while developing this game, and I have thus far remained at the conclusion that a formalized game plan is something that this game does not afford and does not need. Since only loftar and I are working on the project, the project is still small enough for it to be possible for us to carry the game's vision, as a living memeplex, between the two of us. Cheap, easy and with the near automatic and excellent maintenance of the developed brain of a male Homo sapiens. Why would we spend a second documenting stuff we already know?

I think this game has avoided becoming a jumbled mess (It still is to some extent, but we are very aware of where we need to work.) because we work the way we do.

And that is not to say there isn't a game plan. We obviously think ahead, have daily if not hourly contact, and we constantly discuss the project. Currently the plan is, loosely:

Get to map reset. (We need to give our players a huge task/reason to play while we work on quests)

Required features:

Pathfinding (no implementation of new kritters without it),

Object decay, repair and destruction (This map got jumbled with useless baskets, new map should avoid that fate from the start).

Security balance (Same reason here, new map should avoid being confused by issues with ownership and player security since this heavily influences the map development)

Was "Sericulture" and silk moths a part of this? No, but we do try to do fun stuff as well. It's like R'n'R from more serious work. Gear and stuff is, after all, what this game is fundamentally all about.

...but the plan might change completely at any time, so don't expect anything what so ever to happen, except a great game.

[Raephire]

I want to make ginger-jorb men. and Loftar loafs.

[kimya]

i havent been playing for a week or more, simply because i got a bit bored. everythings done in laketown, i think, at least i am, too rich
but with those lovely silkmoths you got me back, at least a bit, hehe. and i totally love to check every day the announcements and wonder what will come next, its a bit like birthday, just that you never know when you were born next time... (confusing?)
so, im totally looking forward to the map-reset and hope that i wont be killed in the meantime. at least, my hearthfire gets destroyed approximately every rl day, so the person hunting me would never know where i am

[Raephire]

Why would anyone hunt you kimya? Also I have been investing in stealth very significantly lately I will find any stored scents and toss them, I swear this.

[kimya]

Why would anyone hunt you kimya? Also I have been investing in stealth very significantly lately I will find any stored scents and toss them, I swear this.

from another thread, here comes the answer:

It is fixed now. I hope you'll be able to find them now.

nah, gave up on tracking ppl when in realized i was, for some seconds, thinking blaze might have stolen my sausages
i dont trust this stuff anymore, its nothing but lies.

LIES!

beware!

im sure someone wants to kill me, cause thats what ppl do nowadays. the arrows in their heads point at everyone. beware!