Perhaps, since I don’t know much about the wildlife of the place from which the sample for the cataclysm was taken, but why are the trees so small in the game? I mean… they do not even reach the second Z level, whereas an ordinary Christmas tree has an average height of 30 meters. 30 meters, this is higher than most structures in the entire game. but the height of the trees in the game… I can literally look around the forest for miles around, with only a telescope and any kind of elevation in my hands, whereas in reality it should be impossible to view the entire forest from a height of less than 30 meters, In the current game, the trees are too small and thin… when I cut down a tree, it falls to the ground in 3 cells long: the exact size of 1 cell is unknown, but if I take into account that this is the length of an average car, it turns out that the height of the trees in the cataclysm is … 6-8 meters?
I’m not saying that you need to add endless steppes with tall trees, impenetrable thickets through which it is not possible to see anything, but you can only pass at your own risk. I am interested in why trees… SO low
It’s one of those things that’s been in the game since well before Z-Levels were as fleshed out as they currently are. so probably it is some sort of engine limitation / no one found a way for an item to penetrate through Z levels. I mean, a Hulk / Giant Bug should technically be taller than a regular house, yet here we are.
Buildings, for example, aren’t a “whole” unit. They’re just layers on top of each other iirc.
Aren’t the cells supposed to be 1 meter wide? ik there’s some exceptions but I feel like i saw that somewhere
I know I can’t really be complaining. But it seems like a lot of the stuff in the game that doesn’t make sense, is based around the devs adding stuff in very early development that works for the moment. And then they build the game around it, and either it becomes to difficult/too much to change later or, they just don’t feel like changing it.
I also noticed the blob really has no major gameplay value (yes ik slimes exist, but they really aren’t the point) but its used as an excuse for everything (“if this is supposed to be realistic, then why is there super healing” "oh, idk lets say its the blob’… “why are mutant insects stronger than some of the most elite monsters”. “oh lets say its the blob”
Another thing:
why do genuinely good ideas get shut down so quickly
for examples. why do some specific un-named mods just go like ‘I don’t actually feel like considering your idea, so I’m going to either tell you: your idea is bad, or bring up a completely unrelated topic’
I don’t think the healing part was a poor excuse though considering even zombies, those dead things, heals fast and has the same blob as we have, plus we might get to the point that they’ll actually make healing similar to irl and nobody would be happy.
In most things though the crux of the problem is what you said about the devs adding stuff. Balance seems to be playing a really bad catch-up game due to how much some things change in such short notice, plus nobody having the skillset, patience, and time to tackle them so some things just gets ignored and forgotten.
The devs are strict on their vision of the game so that tends to be why most propositions are shot down. They can be a bit crass sometimes though in their rejection, which is painful to see especially when the suggestion sounded like it was done in good faith and the suggestee expressed willingness to help.
The people who are making their game (their game, not yours, not mine, it’s theirs) choose what they want and what they don’t want in their game - just like they choose who gets to enter their property and who doesn’t - and no one else gets to have a say on that. If your suggestion gets shot down, it sucks but it is what it is.
If you read the lore (yes, there is actually Lore, which by the sound of your post, you completely decided to not read and make assumptions about how things work) you will see that it isn’t just “because blob” - it really sounds like you found someone’s joke on reddit and ran with it thinking it is 100% true.
If you also had read the lore, you would know that “The Blob” is not related to “The Slimes.”
But it seems like a lot of the stuff in the game that doesn’t make sense, is based around the devs adding stuff in very early development that works for the moment. And then they build the game around it, and either it becomes to difficult/too much to change later or, they just don’t feel like changing it.
This comment stinks of “Tell me you don’t know how game development works without telling me you don’t know how game development works.” lmao. How DARE the people behind the game have an actual life huh?!
Yep, that’s becausr the blob is not actually part of the game, it’s the setting of the game.
As said before tree, and terrain in generale, are in the game since when the game was flat and no one implemented a way to get them though severale z-level. I think multy level trees would be welcome, it’s probably not so trivial to implement though. But it would be nice to climb tree to escape Zs and get stuck there X)
yes, and I’m just commenting my perspective, as a player of the game.
At no point did I say ‘my’ suggestion. I said I see a lot of wasted potential sometimes with good ideas, such as this post about trees…
I’ve actually spent several hours going through the website, the wiki, the github, and anywhere else I can find to get some more of the lore. But I can tell you I am definitely not going to look through every source of the sometimes inconsistent lore to find something that contradicts my own point.
I want you to remember that I was just posting my opinion, and expressing what I feel like sometimes things get shut down before they are even considered
now to post something relevant to this original post.
what if we were to implement trees as several tiles wide (then even could make them not directly symmetrical ( instead of just like a 3x3, maybe make it have one square missing or something)
also to show different kinds of trees you could make some smaller (2x2)
and then if maybe instead of making them randomized, there could be a few ‘templates’ of trees just like how the buildings are generated… which also might support them going into higher z-levels. that might be a lot of work. but I feel it would add to the realism and wouldn’t negatively affect the gameplay. which is what I seem to see as one of the main points of the game .
A lot of games I’ve played usually have the ‘setting’ at least manifest itself in some way (a boss, an item, a main goal, something that adds to the atmosphere) that might just be the kind of games I play, and I know that this game is quite unique (which is the entire reason I’m here, in the game forum, posting about the game) but even roguelikes, survival games, and apocalyptic games. usually have the main setting (for example: some zombie games, there’s a zombie virus, but you have to figure what is actually going on; the setting, is what actually drives the character forward) have a reason that its in the game, other than as an excuse for things. (1: “why did we add giant insects?? oh we thought they would be cool.” 2: “but why are they actually in the game?” 1: “lets just say its the blob”)
I’d like to point out that a z-level is the height of one floor of a building. So trees should maybe be two z-levels high, more for some species, but one z-level isn’t too shabby. It’s not like they’re all a meter high or something.
Maybe they keep the trees extremely well manicured out in New England.
Game development is fundamentally a process of abstraction. The simplest situations that make the most assumptions tend to be the easiest to develop. Once other things build atop those assumptions, changing them becomes extremely fragile. Combine that with it being a volunteer project, and its not a matter of difficulty or even desire, but opportunity cost. I could go and rebuild trees to be taller, which would have a minimal effect on my gameplay, or I could go improve a bit of AI logic so my companions are less suicidal, which would make the game more fun for me.
The games old enough that a lot of ideas have been run to death in the community, so that ‘good’ idea has a decent chance of actually being a bad idea down the full chain of discussion. So when they eventually cycle back around, they’re still recognized as such. The ‘unrelated’ issues are often the very issues that came up last time legitimately, being raised now as “if you go down this path, it’ll hit this”.
In community projects in particular, idea guys are a dime a dozen. Its all volunteer work, so people make what they want to make. When you try to convince someone to make what you want instead, you have to provide an extremely compelling argument for it. What you’re fundamentally doing is making it so that it sounds so good, so cool, that they now want to spend their time making it instead of their other thing.
And if the presentation of the idea isn’t absolutely flawless, atop a fundamentally strong base, you’re not gonna achieve that. So your idea will be disregarded or shut down, and they’ll keep making their own thing.
Edit: Forgot to say, there is another option. Pay people to make the thing. You can find someone at the intersection of “Knows how to add to CDDA” and “Wants a bunch of money more than they want their own features” and then you can have your thing, as long as the idea isn’t fundamentally stupid.
Tree house in the future then? Just saying, plus innawoods experience is gonna get another thing when we get Z-level trees, if trees get some branches that could support stuff that is.
This is true, but remember that developers are super expensive. Just a junior freelancer costs around 10k per month, and when talking about the inventory rewrite KorgGenT did, Kevin eyeballed it as a 80k project minimum.
That reminds me of a Dwarven Fortress. There was at first one-tiled trees and giant mushrooms, but Tarn rewrited them to be multi-tile and multi-z-level. That took him quite a while though.
