UI & Text Size Scaling, Vehicles, Resources

  • Anything below stated is for survival mode, I realize that creative mode may or may not have these issues:


    :!::!:Important UI option:!::!: = Text size must be adjustable SOMEHOW PLEASE!! In the Java version, the lower you set the resolution, the larger text becomes, I have a 1920x1080 monitor, but play in fullscreen at 1152x864 specifically for this reason, otherwise I can't read the tiny text of some things. Don't hold back on this, the players should decide if a single letter or sentence takes up 0.1% of the screen or 100%. Players should be able to decide if the text and UI is small sleek and out of the way because they can read just fine, or if it's big, intrusive and in your face because they can't read as well due to age, disability, genes, etc. Readability is what kills modern games. Ark Survival Evolved is a perfect example, teeny tiny text on a blue on blue on blue UI, ever since it was implemented in 2017, I stopped playing, I just can't handle it. Don't make this mistake, please! Give us power over text and UI scaling pretty please! Auto scaling based on resolution is great, but manually adjustable values (maybe in a config file?) are necessary as well since not everybody's eyes are the same and "perfect scaling" may be perfect for most, but not all, manual adjustability without limits is the best counter to this and will enable 100% of your players to have perfect readability instead of 60% or 70% only.


    Bulldozer/Wrecking Ball (or a better suggestion that has a similar function) = Even with the Steel Sledgehammer, tearing down entire buildings with hundreds of blocks is obnoxious. These vehicles will make it painless and quick, just tear through it! Wonder how much of a performance impact this would have.


    Steamroller (or a better suggestion that has a similar function) = Flattening masses of ground takes so long, 10 square meters is fine, but what about 100 or 1000? This would rectify this. Somehow choose a starting point, kind of like a base for the terrain height, wherever you start the Steamroller could work, and every small hill and bump you roll over will be flattened to the height of the starting point. Only lowering terrain, not raising it, for this, something else would be necessary.


    Lawnmower = I heard this suggested a year or two ago by somebody and fully support this as a perfect way to get rid of grass, obsoleting the scythe completely.


    Aircraft = Anything from a simple Hot Air Balloon (actually sounds awesome) to single engine planes like Cessnas. A seaplane like the Seawind 300C would also be great as it can use water for takeoff and landing as well as the ground! Maybe obnoxious, but a freaking Antonov AN-225 Mriya or any generic cargo plane as a whole would allow us to transport the entire freaking map in one go, haha! This is just wishful thinking though as cargo planes are just plane awesome. Something like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain would also work as it is a smaller cargo plane but still can haul a lot.


    Submarine/Scuba gear = There is plenty of potential underwater, I heard scuba gear mentioned at one point but never subs. I am fine with either, but since we're eventually gonna have cars, trains, electricity, etc. why not a sub?


    Gemstones & Resources = Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Topaz, Diamonds, these can be useful aesthetically as decorations and prized possessions, to show off like rich people do with art and antiques, or red51 has in his mansion, and also for building, plenty of things use Diamonds due to their obnoxious strength. What about the return of the blue ore, Cobalt? If we can think of anything to use it for besides blocks. What about certain metals that are only found in hell? Certain strong and desirable ones like Titanium for example, give us an important reason to dig to hell instead of just because it's awesome, I mean, it IS awesome, but the more reasons, the better! Crystals could be found in certain caves at lower depths as well, varying colors. Could be purely cosmetic reasons, or maybe an alternative to sand specifically for creating glass. Probably some technological purposes in real life too. I would certainly love to place/hang some crystals in my territory just because they look beautiful! Underground oil wells, this could be a cheap yet powerful way of powering modern technology like vehicles, generators, etc. these could be the first/lower tiered vehicles, whereas higher tiered ones could use some more advanced materials, just like in real life. I will assume that there will be at least one train variant that is powered by coal, a steam engine train? Oh, how about a steam boat! YEAH!


    Some antique vehicular weaponry, i.e. Basilisks, Culverins, Trebuchets. Maybe allow the bandits to build and use these as well to tear down your buildings in an attempt to siege your land? This would obviously be an optional server setting, disabled by default, but why not? At this rate why not just take Empire Earth 1 from 2001 for inspiration? :D


    Permanent "Invite to group" feature = This should be self-explanatory. I have one friend on my dedicated server, every time we logon, we need to be physically next to each other to be invited to the same group, so we can see each other on the map, see a red bracket in the world locating each other, etc. Would be nice if similarly to the server.properties admin setting, we could have something like this for a group to eliminate the annoyance of always having to re-add each other every time we logon. I consider this a low priority of course as it is a mere annoyance that doesn't ruin anything at all.


    Stack size setting = I don't know about you, but I would certainly like a somewhat consistent stack size. Torches being 32 and Wooden torchmounts being 64 seems just silly. A setting to define a stack size for an object would be nice so that an issue like the aforementioned does not happen. 64 being the max stack size in general is totally acceptable though, no complaints here! While on topic, why does the Big smelting furnace only have room for 60 ores when a stack size for ores is 64? Couldn't we just have two rows of 32 slots instead of 30 slots in the Big smelting furnace?


    Do note that anything noted here is not specific but rather meant as an example. If anybody, has better suggestions that do the same thing, i.e. a better suited, rising world-esque styled, way to flatten ground en masse instead of the Steamroller, suggest away! Same goes for anything else noted here, I have the ideas, but not the vehicles or tools that would make sense. I have suggested way too much now, I'll shut up, haha.

  • The UI part got my attention :D Did you try out the demo of the new version? The new version has a proper UI scaling (which was basically non-existent in the Java version) so it should work well on all resolutions and aspect ratios. Having a separate text scale option is a bit tricky to implement, but originally we wanted to implement at least a UI scale setting. However, after various tests with various monitors and resolutions, we never ran into a situation where the UI became too small or the text became unreadable - so we decided to not implement a UI scaling option for now.


    Nevertheless, if you still experience any UI scale issues with the new version, please let us know! We appreciate any feedback about that, and if it turns out that there are still UI issues in the new version, we definitely want to get them sorted out :)


    About the other suggestions, some of these things are definitely planned (like the "permanent groups", gemstones). I can't say much about the vehicles yet, basically it is our intention to add various vehicles, vessels and maybe even aircrafts, but unfortunately I can't say much about that yet at this stage :|


    About the stack sizes, I agree that the stack sizes in the Java version are a bit messed up. Actually this works a bit different in the new version: We decided to have slightly smaller chests (no longer having multiple "pages") and instead increase the max. stack sizes of most items. The demo of the new version currently has generous stack size limits (e.g. 999 for resources like stone), but we're still thinking about that ^^

  • Just purchased the game on steam on my PC - I assume it's not a java version but cannot tell. The loading screen says 0.9.6 Alpha bottom left. Running a NVidia 3080 OpenGL 4.6.0 NVIDIA 466.27 drivers.


    Game settings allows selection of Display Mode but NO resolution settings, thus I'm not actually sure what size the resolution is scaling to. I'm using an LG 65in 4K OLED TV as my primary monitor so my default resolution is 3840x2160.


    The lack of UI scaling is my issue. The journal appears as a tiny thing in the centre of the screen and I'm straining to read it. The crafting screen is totally impossible to read it is as if the UI isn't recognising scaling and is displaying fixed scale regardless of screen resolution. The fact I cannot change screen resolution to find a playable screen size means at present the game is not playable for me.


    There is also a strange vanishing point issue where the graphics look as if they are stretched out towards a horizon vanishing point this is evident in all three screenshots. specifically you can see in the trees and the clouds an odd stretching effect.


    Hope this helps you disagnose the issue and provide a fix. I'm a developer myself so happy to work with you to get this sorted.



    small journal text

    tiny screen display

    Impossibly small text on crafting screen

  • About the blur effect... Change or turn off FoV. That will do the trick.

    I usually turn it off as i can't stand this annoying blur effect


    As for the resolution. Try to do fullscreen or if you have that already, the opposite, borderlands window mode. Usually that does it.

    But in this older version i think the ui isn't scalable. red51 could tell more.


    The new version,
    for which just a patch came out, should provide a better control. However its not yet in a state to replace the old version.


    Both are extremely fun to play though, if you enjoy building

  • I assume it's not a java version but cannot tell. The loading screen says 0.9.6 Alpha bottom left. Running a NVidia 3080 OpenGL 4.6.0 NVIDIA 466.27 drivers.

    This is indeed the old Java Version. Unfortunately most parts of the old UI still use absolute positions, that's why they become to tiny on big resolutions :( This can only be fixed by rewriting the UI from scratch... we've already done that for the main menu in the past, but after we've decided to move to a new engine, we stopped working on that part.


    This issue, however, is fixed in the new version. Or more precisely, the UI in the new version scales automatically according to the screen resolution, so you always get the same relative size (no matter if you're playing on 720p or on 8K). We ran some tests on various resolutions (720p, 1080p, 4K, 8K) and aspect ratios (16:9, 21:9, 32:9) and were quite happy with the results.


    The new version is available in Steam as a separate beta branch: To get it, rightclick on RW in your Steam library -> Properties -> Betas -> select "unity - New Version Preview", then close the dialog. Once the download is ready, make sure to run the game from the library (otherwise Steam always launches the Java Version) and select "New Version" in the popup.


    Unfortunately the new version is still very limited in terms of content.


    There is also a strange vanishing point issue where the graphics look as if they are stretched out towards a horizon vanishing point this is evident in all three screenshots. specifically you can see in the trees and the clouds an odd stretching effect.

    You can adjust the FOV in the graphics settings (you first have to load a world, then go to the graphics settings and hit "view adjustment"). Selecting a higher value should reduce the stretching effect.


    The new version also offers an additional "panini projection", which further removes stretching (which happens on ultrawide screens or on very high FOV settings, for example) :)

  • Thanks I can see that the new version looks dramatically better than the old and doesn't seem to have the same issues. I'm assuming though that the lack of content refers to the no journal or tutorial or crafting menu. Obviously since I've never played the game before I've no clue what the controls are or how to use things, and I suspect reading the patch notes that since I haven't got a workbench I can't actually craft anything? So it sounds like I just hold tight until you've had more of a chance to port things across to the new version.

  • Yeah unfortunately the new version is still extremely limited in terms of content and features (that's why the Java version is still promoted on the Steam page and the new version still "hidden" in a beta branch). Stuff like crafting is not implemented yet. We've just added the building tools a few days ago, now we'll focus on blueprints, multiplayer, world generation and crafting. Once that's done, we want to tackle npcs ^^

  • No problem, good to get the feedback and see the progress being made. I'll hold off attempting to play until the new version hits a playable release state. It would needlessly cloud my judgement of the game to do otherwise.

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