Stylish Sharing feedback and clarification request

[Mesh333 32]

Hi Ylanders!

Congrats to all on the promo vid, v nice!

I have been doing some testing of the Stylish Sharing pipeline and thought I'd give some feedback, I probably need some clarification on what is / is not currently possible!

I have been able to upload a Composition and Scenario (IMHO - confusingly called 'Game' in workshop) that were created from scratch with the editor but have been unable to upload one of my Explore games opened in the editor.

Is it possible to share a played Explore map? If so how do we do this? Also, why are the editor options different for a 'Game' edit session, e.g. no terrain tool, no Play option?

Here is what I tried, what worked, what didn't and some comments:-

Uploading a Scenario (which the workshop calls a game):

1. Open a saved Scenario.

2. I have all the options as when starting a new scenario, e.g. Terrain and Play.

3. I'm happy with my Scenario and choose File>Pack for sharing, IMO This is self explanatory and couldn't be easier!  

4. The console gives feedback that the Game is ready to be shared, good.  

5. The console tells you where the saved file is, Cool.  

6. What it doesn't tell you is that to avoid an overwrite it suffixes the file name with a number, Not so cool!  

7. A notification message would be nice and possibly an option to choose the filename...

           ...pre-populate a suffixed number by default (for those of us that don't read notification messages and just hit return! )

8. I then tried a couple of File>Save As 's which worked OK but I have the same comment as above about overwriting filenames and...

9. Console feedback, OK.

10. Console feedback, IMO weak. It didn't confirm where or what filename had been saved.  

11. Tried another Save As of the same Scene with a different save name.

12. Worked OK.  

13. File>Saved As again but this time didn't change the filename which results in the 'automatic' suffixed number to the file name which presents the following to the user next time they open the editor, duplicated files...  

 

Trying to upload an Explore Game:

1. Open a game (created in 4.0 Stylish Sharing).

2. Why are the editing tool options different? e.g. No Terrain tools, no Play?

3. File>Pack for sharing... Nothing seemed to happen, I waited, waited and then decided nothing was happening...  

4. The same thing happened for File>Save As... nothing seemed to happen after entering a filename and clicking Save...  

5. I waited and waited and then assumed nothing was happening and clicked cancel.

 

Behind the scenes, the automatic file suffixing:

 

At some point during the testing my Laptop sprung a leak!   Sorry I can't be more specific as to what caused it...

 

[Houp 237]

Hi Mesh333,

opened save games (from Exploration or other modes) are not sharable at the moment. It is not planned either. "Pack for sharing" should be disabled. Our mistake.

On the other hand it is planned to be able to make a new Game (used to be called Scenario) from your Explore map and then you will be able to share it.

Terrain/Play options when editing your save games:

The first is disabled because it does not make sense to have it there. There is just option for editing name and description of sharable Games and option for regenerating map which just makes a fresh new map. Maybe name of this option is now a little confusing.

The Play button should be there. You are right.

+ thanks for pointing out issues with file naming. We will look into this too.

 

[Mesh333 32]

Hi Houp, thanks for your reply.

If I understand you correctly, I think it is a shame that 'opened saved games' will not be available to share via the workshop. I think it would be nice to see how other people have developed their Ylands (by walking through them yourself), what structures they have built, crops grown, etc, given only the resources available in game (I do realise people could 'cheat' by using add item cmdline to add assets etc. in-game. But who cares if people enjoy doing that!).  

I think there maybe 'a missed opportunity' if only 'from scratch' editor created games (scenarios)  can be shared in the workshop... an option to upload a game created 'on the fly' as people played would be really good and if you could also 'tweak it' in the editor before sharing even better!  

Maybe your team could make it possible to simply share the native save game file? (Although I do realise there may be technical issues with this, file size being one of them? I Have played my 1st Yland for a Month and it is now over 20Mb!).

What does the in game Options>Share do? On my computer it just opens a Windows Explorer window and highlights the saved game file... which could then be manually emailed, uploaded, whatever... why not make it part of 'official' sharing?!  

Please do consider my thoughts, think about how popular 'play through' videos are, how cool would it be to play the same game file yourself?! It is not uncommon to find links to download such files for another popular crafting game, on a very popular video website... Why not keep the 'clicks' within Bohemia?  

Anyway, I wish you all the best whichever direction the game/creator takes you and thanks again, great work.  

 

[Houp 237]

Hi,

it is not set in stone of course. We will surely discuss that more.

Share in Options. Oops. Yes it does what you have said. It is old feature. Our bad.

Thank you for your wishes. We do our best.