Sneak Peek #46

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hey there, fellow ylanders!

If everything goes right, there will be just one more Dev Diary / Sneak Peek (apart from this one) before the “Cheerful Characters” update is released, filled with cool features and numerous fixes, so let’s talk about some of the things you can expect that we haven’t covered before.

Addition of Weapons & Armor Information

In the past, we've already mentioned that our artists are working on a new world, with new biomes, building blocks, animals, monsters, recipes and, last but not least, weapons and armors. That is very important because in this world the monsters will present, in general, a bigger challenge than what you are experiencing right now, so you will need some new weaponry and some fine protective gear as well. Even though your current weapons won’t turn into a worthless garbage when you arrive at the new world (I can imagine you will be using them a lot even there), there will be situations when the new weapons will be much more efficient. 

Because it matters what weapon you use against which opponent and which armor against which kind of damage (some are better against melee weapons, others are good against energy-based attacks etc.) starting with 0.7 you will see how strong every weapon is, what kind of damage it deals and which armors are good or weak in certain ways. Right now it shows as a simple text info when you hover over the given item, but eventually, some better visual representation will be added.

Sleeping in MP

Just as we have a list of most pressing issues we have a list of what features you request the most. One of the top three spots is occupied by the possibility of sleeping even in an MP game. From your feedback we see that it is really important to you so you will get it with 0.7.

When there’s more than one player in the current world, the game is considered MP and in that case all active players have to go to sleep for the time shift to commence.

Whenever anyone wants to sleep, all they have to do is lie down on a bed or a bedroll and select when they want to wake up (morning, noon, evening, midnight). Once the wake-up time is set, all the players in the world get notified in the console that someone has initiated MP sleep. At the same time, an unobtrusive icon is displayed for those who might have missed the notification.

What the other players need to do is just lie down on a bed or a bedroll as well. With each player who has done so, the updated information shows how many are ready. As soon as everyone is lying down, the sleeping commences. Please note that for this to happen the players can be anywhere in the world. To make the communication easier at some later update we are going to introduce a general chat channel, where players will be able to talk to each other all over the game world (but, for obvious reasons, it will be very easy to disable this channel).

 

Sure, they are cute... for now! But if they get angry, you better have a scripted automated turret or two!  

 

New Editor and Scripting Features

With the introduction of NPCs we have added a lot of functionality to scripting and Editor in general. Although it isn’t as user-friendly as we would like it to be (this will be changed in a few months, where the scripting will get a complete overhaul), it is already possible to use it to do a lot of cool things. Just to name some of the new features:

* You can set entities indestructible. Nobody will be able to destroy them, not even with an Annihilator

*  There are new options in "Perform action with an entity" called "Rotate part to" and "Fire". This lets you create things like automated turrets made of cannons that aim at various targets and fire with whatever you load them with (via action called "Put into container")

* Go to command available in the Editor toolbar that lets you quickly move around the world / various ylands

* Waypoints are a new type of game logic that can be used to setup movement behaviors of both NPCs and animals

* Actions sequencer lets you create a list of actions which you can later execute from various game logic elements

* Dialogue is a type of action that lets you ... well... setup a dialogue. Fun fact: you can script dialog even with / among animals

* You can now edit characters in saved games - access their inventory, equipment and even change their appearance

* Creation of more complex conditions by chaining them

* ... and there's actually more
 

That’s it for this week, and I’ll see you again next Friday. Until then you have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

[stlnegril9 9]

23 minutes ago, Aleš Ulm said:

Sure, they are cute... for now! But if they get angry, you better have a scripted automated turret or two!

What would the death message be? Mercilessly pummeled by penguin wings?

[V-Alfred 367]

AWESOME! Finally focusing on Editor! Thanks for the update guys! @Aleš Ulm I have 1 question related to Editor, did you manage to optimize the array of Events of game logic in Editor?
Because when you make events in game logic up to 50+ with all tab of each events are open, the performance when editing game logic get worse. If you close that game logic menu, the game works normally.

Edited February 2, 2018 by Velocifer

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

So. Many. Penguins. 0_0

 

 

Have you fixed the major issues with the editor? 

 

For me the issues I have are: 

1) 1/3 saves do not save

2) Saves showing as saved but nothing saved

3) Deleting of saves after leaving editor (I believe this has to do with steam file sync)

4) Save does not register changes when saving over old save (sometimes)

5) Save corruption

6) Snap-to-gird building does not work causing bricks to be places 1-2 cm off from each other from the grid

 

I love this game. I want to share how my editor experience went, please don't take this the wrong way. 

 

1. My first map (which I worked a day on did not save and I did not know it). 
2. The next day I realized, wrote down all I did the day before and remade it. 80% was lost due to save issues. 
3. The next day I made 72 saves. This created a huge amount of data which steam could not sync and therefore steam deleted my saves. 
4. The next day I hand-copied all saves out as I made them. 137 in all. Sadly the play-test system stopped working at save 130 so I had to go with that. The server would not run any of these saves. 
5. I remade the map on a new pc. The save is, to this day corrupt. 

 

Put yourself in our shoes. When we hear about new features, how do we feel? 

 

I am not mad at all as I got a week of rest out of it which I needed but I hope that this will be helpful in some way. I love this game and will support you to the end and I know early access is early access. 

Edited February 2, 2018 by RedEagle_MGN

[leo_chaos 23]

Would like the option for the editor to auto save or something. It seems prone to random crashes which can lose a lot of progress 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

I fear auto-save will make corruption overwriting maps more of a problem.

 

As in its a challenge to versioning.  

[blfonsworth 10]

Maybe i missed it.. is there an eta on 0.7

Will there be a fix for MP map or inventory bug?

 

Keep up the awesome work!

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

9 minutes ago, blfonsworth said:

Maybe i missed it.. is there an eta on 0.7

Will there be a fix for MP map or inventory bug?

 

Keep up the awesome work!

10th

[Silwercastle 85]

1 hour ago, RedEagle_MGN said:

10th

No, after seeing that they are going to have another sneak peak before the update I think we are looking rather at  something like 14-16th.

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

Saw a screenshot this morning from a developer in Discord saying the intention was the 10th but we never know  

[BigBoss87 68]

Thanks for this SP

Keep it up!

[BraveSole 0]

More variety and use for armor/weapons sounds great but that also makes me think of even less backpack/storage space to carry all of them depending on the situation.

[Energritz_ 107]

While new news is good news, after devs were saying slated for early feb its been pushed back to mid feb... i dont know if the DS will last that long.. the save file is already at 20MBs.. not to mention lots of errors in console..

[bojo2736 1016]

Bigger, badder, critters?  So I have been wondering.  There are stone statues of many of the animals in the game.  And there is a dragon.  Is that foreshadowing? Or does it already exist?

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

@Velocifer You're right, when there's more in that array it becomes really difficult to work with. I'm not sure what exactly is that you have there but at least in some cases the newly introduced Actions sequencer may help with making that list easier by moving actions to an external object and executing it from your script. If that doesn't help, the new scripting visualization will - it will be faster and much easier to work with. 

@RedEagle_MGN I'm not familiar with this issue but I know that a lot has been fixed in the Editor. I will ask our programmers on Monday what can they tell me about this one and let you know on Monday (thanks for the additional info in PM  )

@leo_chaos We'd love the Editor not to crash at all (if it happens to you, could you please - unless you've done so already - create a post about it in the bug section of this forum? It would help us a lot!  ) but having some sort of smart autosave/backup feature makes sense. Thanks.

@blfonsworth Sadly, no. The map requires more than a simple fix to make it work properly. I should be able to tell you in a week or two at most if the new map will make it into 0.8 (which we would like very much).

@Energritz_ I'm not sure I quite follow - what do you mean by DS not lasting that long? For a MP game of this type 20MB is not a big save (you have to take into account that we have an editable terrain so information about any single voxel getting adjusted in any way needs to be saved just as the changes to any of tens of thousands of interactable/pickable/destroyable entities in the world - if we had a static map with static trees, grass etc. the save games could easily be just hundreds of kilobytes  ). As for the errors in the console - could you please point me towards some post where this is reported so that I can check with the programmers what's the cause / status on that on Monday? Thanks!

@bb cakes I'm sorry, but we won't be making any comments on the world... yet  

ETA for 0.7 is, indeed, around 14-16th but it's really nothing more than an estimate. It's true that originally we wanted to release it a few days earlier but some things we've included in 0.7 will require more extensive testing. It can be ready sooner but it can be even later. In general it's more important for us to release something that is not broken than to meet a certain date

Have a great weekend everyone and if you have more questions, I'll get to answer those on Monday!

[V-Alfred 367]

8 minutes ago, Aleš Ulm said:

 You're right, when there's more in that array it becomes really difficult to work with. I'm not sure what exactly is that you have there but at least in some cases the newly introduced Actions sequencer may help with making that list easier by moving actions to an external object and executing it from your script. If that doesn't help, the new scripting visualization will - it will be faster and much easier to work with. 

You'll see in my creation thread soon.. hehe 

Awesome, glad you have another methods. Thanks 

[Ane 1213]

14 hours ago, RedEagle_MGN said:

Saw a screenshot this morning from a developer in Discord saying the intention was the 10th but we never know  

I said "in 10 days or so", not "the 10th"

Please don't say a date if you're not 100% sure about it, I've already seen it happen several times this week and it creates confusion (I mean in general, not only you). As a general rule, we won't be saying a specific day unless we're VERY sure.

[Energritz_ 107]

5 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

@Energritz_ I'm not sure I quite follow - what do you mean by DS not lasting that long? For a MP game of this type 20MB is not a big save (you have to take into account that we have an editable terrain so information about any single voxel getting adjusted in any way needs to be saved just as the changes to any of tens of thousands of interactable/pickable/destroyable entities in the world - if we had a static map with static trees, grass etc. the save games could easily be just hundreds of kilobytes  ). As for the errors in the console - could you please point me towards some post where this is reported so that I can check with the programmers what's the cause / status on that on Monday? Thanks!

From the various DS operators on this forum, especially in the DS forums, when file size increases the Lagg and stuttering increases, a few users have gotten to 60MBs+ on their DS's. All information relating to this make the game more

stuttery and unplayable, not to mention the DS i run is very small player base, compared to other established DS's operators here with 100's of members in their communities, having worse issues..

While I'm playing on the DS there is frequent pauses, even when I'm the only player on the server... even after i clean up the world.. doesn't seem to make any difference vs a fresh world..

Also why does the data that's saved have to be in one file? character data, aux data, I'm sure this is causing a performance hit in some way or another... does not make sense to me ..

due to this freezing and stuttering and nothing being done to fix the issue, I'm just rather frustrated...

 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

8 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

@Velocifer You're right, when there's more in that array it becomes really difficult to work with. I'm not sure what exactly is that you have there but at least in some cases the newly introduced Actions sequencer may help with making that list easier by moving actions to an external object and executing it from your script. If that doesn't help, the new scripting visualization will - it will be faster and much easier to work with. 

@RedEagle_MGN I'm not familiar with this issue but I know that a lot has been fixed in the Editor. I will ask our programmers on Monday what can they tell me about this one and let you know on Monday (thanks for the additional info in PM  )

@leo_chaos We'd love the Editor not to crash at all (if it happens to you, could you please - unless you've done so already - create a post about it in the bug section of this forum? It would help us a lot!  ) but having some sort of smart autosave/backup feature makes sense. Thanks.

@blfonsworth Sadly, no. The map requires more than a simple fix to make it work properly. I should be able to tell you in a week or two at most if the new map will make it into 0.8 (which we would like very much).

@Energritz_ I'm not sure I quite follow - what do you mean by DS not lasting that long? For a MP game of this type 20MB is not a big save (you have to take into account that we have an editable terrain so information about any single voxel getting adjusted in any way needs to be saved just as the changes to any of tens of thousands of interactable/pickable/destroyable entities in the world - if we had a static map with static trees, grass etc. the save games could easily be just hundreds of kilobytes  ). As for the errors in the console - could you please point me towards some post where this is reported so that I can check with the programmers what's the cause / status on that on Monday? Thanks!

@bb cakes I'm sorry, but we won't be making any comments on the world... yet  

ETA for 0.7 is, indeed, around 14-16th but it's really nothing more than an estimate. It's true that originally we wanted to release it a few days earlier but some things we've included in 0.7 will require more extensive testing. It can be ready sooner but it can be even later. In general it's more important for us to release something that is not broken than to meet a certain date

Have a great weekend everyone and if you have more questions, I'll get to answer those on Monday!

Thanks for the replies! You guys really take time to communicate and we appreciate it! 

 

Good to hear the editor is getting that boost!

 

 

Edited February 3, 2018 by RedEagle_MGN

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

4 hours ago, Ane said:

I said "in 10 days or so", not "the 10th"

Please don't say a date if you're not 100% sure about it, I've already seen it happen several times this week and it creates confusion (I mean in general, not only you). As a general rule, we won't be saying a specific day unless we're VERY sure.

I will be more careful in the future and ask others to be also  

 

[Fight or Flight Gamer 4]

Awesome changes sounds great.  I too have had issues with editor not saving all the time. I found it best to hit the save icon at the top & don't move cursor until you get the "game saved" message at the bottom . If I don't do it this way & go into file,  return to main menu instead it brings up box to save or don't save, if you hit save from here my game crashes most of the time.  Are there any tutorials on how to use the editor for making games?  I'm figuring out the building part but no idea on scenarios.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Just a quick update - yesterday I had a discussion with our programmers about changes not getting saved in the editor and there's at least one issue fixed that could have caused this. There could be some other potential causes as well but to avoid what we found from happening please always give it few more seconds before leaving the editor after saving your game (there's something going on in the background). Obviously this will be fixed in 0.7 so please consider this just a temporary workaround.

[V-Alfred 367]

On 2/6/2018 at 2:28 PM, Aleš Ulm said:

There could be some other potential causes as well but to avoid what we found from happening please always give it few more seconds before leaving the editor after saving your game (there's something going on in the background). Obviously this will be fixed in 0.7 so please consider this just a temporary workaround.

Exactly like I was thinking.. That system notification was too fast saying that "It's being saved completely" (my potato beast machine won't work that fast ).. After I got that issue "some blocks changes don't save", I always wait until the System notification disappear, and it seems works well that way.

[Silwercastle 85]

1 minute ago, Velocifer said:

...... "some blocks changes don't save"...

You are lucky my game just give me a "am not saving this crap, try again.."

[V-Alfred 367]

1 minute ago, Silwercastle said:

You are lucky my game just give me a "am not saving this crap, try again.."

lol  What happen there? It seems like you did Alt+F4 or End Task or BSOD to quickly shutdown your machine.. 
Oh well, you better luck next time..