Game Development: Merry Igloo!

[Massa]

[*] Added some Road building QoL. A vector is now drawn between the previous Road sign, and the one you are currently placing, indicating the walk path the placement will yield. The game will by default prevent blocked roads from being built, but you can insist by holding shift.

But why not just make roads ignore all collision except for with player placed obstructions (houses, walls, etc.)?

[loftar]

But why not just make roads ignore all collision except for with player placed obstructions (houses, walls, etc.)?

Mainly because following and travelling along roads should work as similarly as possible.

[Massa]

But why not just make roads ignore all collision except for with player placed obstructions (houses, walls, etc.)?

Mainly because following and travelling along roads should work as similarly as possible.

but no one does this and honestly I don't accept it as like, a convincing reason when it would make roads so much more pleasant and graceful to make, use, and keep.

also, most stuff in your collision path gets lubed up by bounding boxes or whatever, so really, if we speed the experience up to instant, following a road vs. traveling along it is much smoother. tree collision doesn't do a ton for most people's palates probably.

[SnuggleSnail]

Mainly because following and travelling along roads should work as similarly as possible.

Why?

>90% of the people using roads are just teleporting. Even if some people want to follow roads it's not like they couldn't make road that support that themselves. Kinda feels like your justification is to remove functionality/choice from the majority to support some larpy behavior that ppl could still engage with either way

[shubla]

but no one does this and honestly

Maybe not on your own trails. But some passerby might follow them etc. which is what I think loftar is looking for here.

[loftar]

Maybe not on your own trails. But some passerby might follow them etc. which is what I think loftar is looking for here.

Indeed.

[wonder-ass]

99% of the time the following gets abrupted by trees and anything else none player made its genuinely awful. its quirky and fun for the facebook mom that follows 2 minimaps of a trail once a month but for people that actually use these mechanics daily actively its just a slap in the face xd.

[Massa]

Maybe not on your own trails. But some passerby might follow them etc. which is what I think loftar is looking for here.

Indeed.

The entirety of fast travel (something we've hopefully convinced you that making easier will dramatically help the game's welfare and longevity, considering recent updates have made it more accessible) shouldn't be neutered or crippled for the sake of the travelling sensibilities of one random vagrant.

One random vagrant whose bounding boxes will clear 99.9999999999999% of all trees, boulders, and obstructions other than things like walls, which would obstruct a road anyway. Whose bounding boxes will NOT clear the issue of cliffs in his way, or rivers, of which there will be many along the way. A constant series of stops, none of which are likely to be boulders, trees or logs (logs are pretty likely if they're in a line).

So like what gives bro I feel like I've made a decent argument here. Collision bad, leads to fucky wucky silly willy roads and a headache in general. You would see probably a little more travel and networks in general, and movement across the world, but not quite as cheap as vporting/signposting was in legacy. It would still take time, effort, a lot, especially to build any useful network, depending on the kinds of roads.

[VDZ]

Mainly because following and travelling along roads should work as similarly as possible.

but no one does this

Speak for yourself. If I find a road somewhere, that means there's something interesting at one of the two endpoints, and depending on circumstances I may choose to follow it to see what that interesting something is. As you can only fast-travel from an endpoint, this generally involves using the 'follow' option.

One random vagrant whose bounding boxes will clear 99.9999999999999% of all trees, boulders, and obstructions other than things like walls, which would obstruct a road anyway. Whose bounding boxes will NOT clear the issue of cliffs in his way, or rivers, of which there will be many along the way. A constant series of stop, none of which are likely to be boulders, trees or logs (logs are pretty likely if they're in a line).

So like what gives bro I feel like I've made a decent argument here. Collision bad, leads to fucky wucky silly willy roads and a headache in general. You would see probably a little more travel and networks in general, and movement across the world, but not quite as cheap as vporting/signposting was in legacy. It would still take time, effort, a lot, depending on the kinds of roads.

This, however, is correct. There are various obstacles which do not impede following but do block fast-travel, and this is the most common reason for roads to become blocked after initially being built. (Trees and rocks are also the biggest navigational issue in building them in the first place, even though neither blocks following.) At the same time (and shooting myself in the foot here, bridges when?) roads are commonly built across rivers - often even built solely to be able to cross rivers using land-based travel such as horses - and occasionally take other liberties that render the route invalid for follow travel, requiring manual navigation in sections even though fast-travel works.

I agree with the principle of having them be consistent (which would also be far more intuitive) but currently they are not, so if that's how you intend for them to function there's some work to be done there still.

[LtTurtleshot]

Props! The road building process is so much easier now! Amazing work!