Indomitus

The jail I have in mind is really for punishing unwanted player behavior, not a gameplay feature. And good luck digging out of mine. It's several hundred meters in the air. And why even have a jail when you can just ban them? Well, it can be connected to logic that can auto-detect certain things, like attacking other players or their tamed horses. A few hits on another player might earn them a few minutes in that limbo, with time increasing with each infraction. The hope there is that they will learn. If not, it can also save their infraction history so an Admin can make a decision next time they're online. (30 minutes was kind of an extreme example. By that point, they'd hopefully be gone already.)

I haven't encountered any griefers yet, but I've only just returned to online play a few weeks ago, and I've been really careful about avoiding other players while I gather supplies and get off the spawn island as fast as I can. Been giving a lot of thought to admin capabilities, and even started building a "jail". In what I have so far, the prisoner's time only elapses while they're actually online. If they're sentenced to 30 minutes, then they have to sit and stare at nothing for 30 minutes before they can rejoin the game. Unstuck and Killme not only do not work to free them, but such attempts will start their time over. While in the jail they are set to invincible, so they can't kill each other. All of their belongings are confiscated, and maybe returned after release (still thinking over that part). The only issue is with them blocking sleep requests. One thing that would be nice is if Admin players could do things about barriers that are causing problems. Turn them off, delete them, completely disable them, make changes inside them even when activated, whatever. I wonder if a despawn command would work on one that's been activated, but that would have to be tested in MP with willing test subjects.

I hope they fix this soon. I really want to play online, but what's the point of building anything if the servers time out constantly (and why always when I'm sailing) and maps have to be replaced so often.

Important difference between the new HUD and the old UI is that the new HUD is specifically separate for each player. If there is something you want to show the same for all, then you have to loop and set it for each one. (Unless I'm missing some universal command or player enum that would do it all at once.) Custom HUD is simply for displaying the player's information. The Custom Window has elements the player can interact with, such as entering text, and clicking buttons. For both they can be turned on or off, and items or groups within them can be turned on or off.

One thing that's not very intuitive is that they can break things to get something they might need. Paper from books, or seeds from plants, for example.

If the islands are going to be more diverse and interesting, that might compensate for it a little. A current map might have 12 islands, but they're basically identical except for the shape. If you've seen one Taiga, you've seen them all. Still, though, it is disappointing to hear.

One suggestion to how they could make an idea like this work somewhat easily: Introduce a second type of Protective Barrier. It would be Editor-only, and allow for configuring what players can or can't do while inside it. Meaning we could allow the players to build in and around it, allow their barriers to overlap it, but we could turn off things like digging, looting bushes, picking plants, sawing trees, or things like that, for anyone inside it.

In response to his answer on the bonus question... Ylands without flying sharks?!? WHAAAAAT?

How about leaving the existing books as not editable, but giving us a blank book object with an array of pages inside that we can edit. To keep it manageable, maybe the number of pages can be limited.

It would be nice to know if there is anyone there or not. Not sure how possible that would be with multiple servers, but there must be some way of showing it. Would also be nice (though maybe too much lag) to be able to connect to Playlands outside of our region, if we want to play in there with friends from around the world.

My perspective on the Editor vs Explore is probably a bit different, given that one of my previous gaming obsessions was Little Big Planet. In that game, there was fun to be had in the standard play modes, but that was limited (to me, anyway). There was a little replay value in my opinion, but not much. The thriving community of LBP creators at the time, however, meant there was always some new challenge to be tried. Most of the players might not want to work in the Editor themselves, but those that do can create interesting games and challenges to keep the rest playing the game. I, for one, hope to eventually see advanced controls for the animals and terrain. I'd love to some day try to build a "Hardcore PVE Mode" where the predators are harder to kill, get much more aggressive at night instead of sleeping, spawn and respawn more rapidly, and where crafting progression is more difficult and limited in its scope. If we had an Editor-Only type of terrain that can't be modified at all outside the Editor (without affecting terrain modification in general) that would be pretty cool too. Glad to see they've reconsidered allowing scripting additions to explore maps. Those are very useful for the regular PVE servers, as they said above.

To start the fire, first one must become the fire.

I encountered this today with P1's NA server. I was on it earlier but was kicked when the server was taken down for a restart. I was sailing at the time. Now I can't connect to it again at all, I have tried several times. It gets just past "Recalling buildings" then freezes a bit, and then: output_log.txt output_log_clean.txt

While testing a game in Character Mode with the mobile size limit turned on, the character can get stuck against the side of the barrier. This happens when they are running or flying, and they will be stuck in the location where they make contact. The only way I have found to release it is to exit Character Mode. It is also possible to fly through the top of the barrier and walk around on the top. Not able to get back into the play area without exiting Character Mode. It doesn't seem to affect the game in full testing mode.

FYI for everyone: The Area Center is not set using regular grid coordinates. It is the number of chunks in each direction. I have a request: Can this screen also display that center position as the grid location, in addition to the chunk count? This would be very helpful for centering and positioning structures and parts of the play area.

I swear, you feed ONE horse and suddenly they're all walking up looking for free corn.

I haven't played the new update quite yet... Will there be a way to apply this option to older Editor Scenarios, or will we have to copy/paste or recreate them? Can we choose where that 3x3x3 section is selected on a generated map or is it always around 0,0,0? (For example, if I want to create a boat racing game for mobile, it would need to be in a location that is 100% water, not on an island.)

They will need certain pieces in place in the PC version to make it compatible and able to interact with the mobile version. Some of those pieces are very likely in the "foundation" of the game code, so they would need to be implemented early, before the port to mobile is really started.

But berries don't suddenly glitch out of existence, right out of your chest or inventory. Fish do (for now).

While exploring, why not try to make a few new friends along the way?

I'm not one of the devs so I don't know for sure, but my (non-game) developer instincts are crying out "data indexing problem." It's reminding me of issues I used to have with older database formats, with the file size growing quickly and performance taking a nose dive. It does kind of make sense to me, if players are digging up resources (spawning new entities) and exploring to new chunks that were either not fully defined or not defined at all when the map was created. The server would probably append that data to the end of the game file, or the end of certain blocks of data. Over time, the indices can get muddled, and lookup operations in the code get slower and slower. It can even result in corrupted data. And the problem does happen on local single-player games as well, it just takes a whole lot longer to get that bad. IF that's the case, then fixing it for the long term will be a pain. I don't envy them on that job. However, maybe something could be added to server options to take a map offline and rebuild the indices, on demand or on a schedule, that could ease the pain until a full fix is complete. And just for the sake of saying it again: I don't know that is the problem, really. This is just reminding me of issues I've faced with older business software I've built.

Yeah, whatever, you're sorta pitchy.

As difficult as it may be to talk about, I do agree with this. Consider it a "we bring this up because we care" sort of discussion. The game has incredible potential, but with the full release approaching rapidly, there are still some glaring imperfections. If we're wanting to build a community around the game, the online multiplayer experience needs to be much more smooth and reliable.

The chest is buried; I've found it once or twice. I think the only thing visible is a shovel standing in the ground nearby, and possibly a couple other pirate-related items nearby. As for whether it's on the same island, I don't remember clearly. But I think random encounters that are related do tend to be grouped on or around the same island (the vault/sub/tower/skybox combo, for example).

Well worth the price to get a legit copy, especially with all the updates since that pirated version and all the upcoming updates. If you're playing a version that old, it's hardly even the same game, really.