Upcoming: New player models

Yeah, I can't understand all the hate on steam. Game is in alpha, and yet better than some "Finished" games I have played. Would I love monthly updates of course! But I have worked with code and building data systems, and you really need to get it right. Too often I have seen the rushed system that then needs almost a total rewrite because some component was done shoddy. I love this game.

Quote from lostinthewood

But I have worked with code and building data systems, and you really need to get it right. Too often I have seen the rushed system that then needs almost a total rewrite because some component was done shoddy.

Being the wizard behind the curtain, pulling at all those levers and pushing all those buttons does bring along a lot of grief. If you take your time to make sure everything is running smoothly, you'll get shit upon along the way, followed with an "it's about time" complaint when it's out. Yet, if you appease the masses and release early, and even warn the masses there might be bugs, again, you get shit upon, and sometimes even more than if you had delayed for perfection. This is not the 1980s anymore, where most (E.T. for the 2600 being an exception (oh what a one-button fiasco)) games were tested thoroughly before being released. Back then, it was unheard of to have alpha releases. Kind of hard with carts. Heheh

People don't realize how special it is to be invited to play and even play-test an alpha released game. To know the developers (like Red and his team) are working hard to build what they feel is the best game ever, and to try to convince us of the same. To know that your suggestions could very well be in a future update because the developer probably didn't think about it but loved it, or he did think about it, and decided to release it early as a surprise. Unfortunately, releasing easter eggs (so to speak) with each update does put extra pressure on you as a developer, because if you've been doing it for so long, now your clients are expecting them.

Unfortunately, developers can never please everyone all the time. They can just do their best to release what they themselves want, and hope it's what others want as well. Red and his team has my vote for the long haul. As long as he doesn't introduce tribbles. Heheheh

Quote from Darwin_Blackwolf

Red and his team has my vote for the long haul. As long as he doesn't introduce tribbles. Heheheh

I also think that Red should take any time he needs. I've never seen a game which had so few bugs like Rising World. I hope that this will continue, and I know that quality needs time.

And it is not he who introduces tribbles. They have a different name today, a more modern one: "Game haters"

Quote from Darwin_Blackwolf

People don't realize how special it is to be invited to play and even play-test an alpha released game.

This. SO much this. Big companies often make a big deal about betas, making them closed, and putting a lot of red tape around it, and only a small group gets to try it and give feedback. And this is an alpha and Red51 is sharing the whole thing with all of us, and not just going "yeah, tell me of bugs and I'll do whatever I want" but he actually listens to people's ideas. Just that alone makes the game in Early Access already worth it. And to top it all, we get a game that's high quality, beautiful, with tons of features. Yes, I'm quite enjoying the ride!

Quote from Coyggy

Compairing an ALPA game like RW with a finnished game like minecraft that just adds more content is a pretty badthing to do. Ofc minecraft runs 100000 times smoother then RW does at the moment. But RW have more potential and the graphics is what makes RW stand out from other simular games. So when (if) RW ever gets to the state where it is a finnished game im sure both popularity and rep will raise alot.

Most of the ppl complaining about RW are little kids that dont understand what and ALPHA game are. And propably dont even understand the word development. They just look at pics and buys a game and gets disapointed and give bad reviews

The only reason we're comparing Minecraft and Rising World are these few points:

1) Development process for making games tend to be the same that you have to make everything from scratch. Releasing it in 'batches'. You see it with every game. You can easily make note of them via development patch notes & how assets have to be made (this is the biggest one)
2) Open world fun with the whole survival & crafting. This is more relevant & true when you look at the modding side that people simply desire Minecraft modded done seriously in a Rising World environment.
3) Minecraft is a good example of what to do & what not to do, something I've listed (maybe poorly) in my previous postings. Whatever Minecraft fails to do Red51 can do better seeing as how games should continue to learn from other game's failures. It's a learning experience, something that may tie in with #1

It may be a bad thing when you compare it feature wise, yet development wise you can learn a lot. That's how I see it.

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And yeah, we should be thankful and grateful for having Rising World being the way it is now because back in the 90's & 00's you were stuck with a game in the state it was released in. You were at the mercy of having the game it was, maybe with a few patches, yet it stuck as it was that it needed mods to add more content to it. Games like 'Battlefield 1942', Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, among others.

People don't understand how much nicer they have it this generation that they're whining for the sake of whining not knowing what they're doing that they simply want that 'power of influence', something they don't even know how to handle. It's like people pretending to be swordsman, yet they'll die easily on the actual battlefield because they don't know how to swing the sword around......People have a voice, yet they don't know how to use it.

I also agree with the postings above this one making note of how cheap betas are in AAA gaming world, among others. You guys can word it properly.

Alright, sorry. I just wanted to cross post some necessary information for people who may also steer away from Steam thanks to all the toxicity.

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Both responses are from Red51:

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Well, it's difficult to tell how the game will look like exactly when it leaves early access (this doesn't mean that there will be no more updates, but when the game leaves early access, it can be considered as a "final product"). The three main aspects of the game will be building, survival and exploration. Right now this is mostly a building game, there aren't many exploration and survival features in the game.
On the one hand, we want to add more survival features and challenges, but on the other hand, we don't want to turn this into a nerve wracking game. This goal can be partly achieved by making the gameplay customizable (so people can enable or disable certain features), and that's definitely the way we want to go. Generally speaking it's very important for us to keep the game as customizable as possible, not least by offering a powerful modding/plugin API.

Nevertheless, personally I think this game will be quite versatile in the end. We will always keep the high degree of freedom when it comes to the building system (and even the building system still has A LOT of room for improvements). Things like "electricity" provides more flexibility and is interesting for nearly every tinkerer. Adding various survival features makes the game more challenging. Having more dungeons and better loot (especially when being able to sell items to traders) might greatly improve the exploration part (there is still a lot of unused potential in my opinion). Features like npcs, horses, trains, ships, cars and other vehicles make the game much more enjoyable. And last but not least a powerful (and easy to use) modding API enables you to add all features that will be never part of the vanilla game (e.g. turn it into a WW2 game or even into a racing game)

The bolded part above is because one Steam troll reviewer claimed Rising World was "rebranded" as a 'builder' claiming it was a cop-out, and etc. A silly response. It was easier to start off with builder to gradually wander into the intended survival & exploration that Red51 desires from the game. The game had to start somewhere in development, and that's how it was started.

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I really don't dare to give a precise ETA, but I'm sure the update will be finally available in September, unless something goes wrong

This update took/takes very long for basically two reasons: On the one hand, we had (and still have) to rely on freelancer modeler/animators, who don't work exclusively for Rising World (so if something on the animation part needs to be changed, it sometimes take a few weeks).
On the other hand, we had to change a lot of stuff in the game, especially in order to handle the new animations properly. It would have been much easier if these models would have been available from the very beginning, unfortunately we did not have the funds for this prior Steam release =/

However, it's important to keep in mind that this is not only a "player models update" It also introduces a bunch of new items, and some of these items (e.g. ranged weapons) take the gameplay into new directions. More important, this update will be the foundation for nearly all upcoming survival features, and the high amount of new items allow us to finally rework the crafting recipes (which is necessary to ensure that there is something like a "red thread" in the game)

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Unfortunately the gamescom caused a small delay in this update. I still don't dare to give a precise ETA, but I'm sure that it will be available in September Once this update is finally out, the following updates will be available much faster

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(Side-note: Sorry if I myself am toxic, yet blaming it all on the Steam environment of people taking advantage of the silence between updates claiming Red51 lost interest in the game, and just being a general pain in the rear. I may also be unintentionally misreading things in the process.)

I'm glad you posted that here and in one thread. I have faith in Red51 (that's part of why I bought the game in the first place!) but I'm the kind of person who likes staying informed. I'm much happier knowing it's delayed than anxiously checking if the update's gone live every few hours. At least for the next 7 days, I can rest easy!

You're welcome, and once against apologies if I come across as obnoxious or toxic.

But yeah, can rest easier now knowing there's a rough window in September after being "delayed" from Gamescom fun, animation complexities, and tweaking of the update. Soon! We can now rest easy knowing it'll be out around the corner

Hey peoples!

First, I would like to thank you a lot for this awesome game and tell you to take your time to release updates. To be patient for a good result!
And I have a question about this big update coming: when it is released, it will be better to generate a new map or we can continue on the current without problem?

as with all updates red will make sure to release a converter built into the game that will automatically convert our old worlds to the new version

Oh okay that's perfect! Thank you

The converters however haven't always been perfect and some strange things can be seen sometimes in the land. Holes to nothingness (can be fixed most times by pressing F10), flying plants, et cetera.

Also I read somewhere that Red51, even though tries his best to not break previous maps, does not guarantee that. He has said before not to get very attached to a map, just in case.

I think that's perfectly fine, it is an alpha game after all, we should expect changes that are not backwards compatible with previous maps, in particular with big updates like the one coming.

I would be happy just with blueprints being converted properly from version to version so you can deploy your builds from previous version maps into new ones

Go @red51!

It's September

Time to start obsessively checking for new update

In the meantime, I've relatively nearly finished my first very own large building!

Was the update completed?

No news yet. But since Red's best estimate so far is September, it could come anytime now

That's to say, I'm super hyped and I hope it gets to us soon.

So that's another nice checkpoint to cross. First the preview article, now the transition into September itself.

"Soon!"

(I now need this next update to indirectly patch my glitched gaming experiences.)

I dunno, I think 5 months is actually kinda "soon" in game development time! Sure beats Stardew Valley, where "multiplayer is coming soon" became "wait two years. oh, and we still had a delay".

Looks great @red51 seeing all the new clothing possibilities gives me some idea's. An RPG environment possibly with monastery, allegiances, battles, castles and so much more! This is going to be a big boom for your game if we can get some awesome map makers. We could upload or download those worlds so friends could enjoy on their own server or perhaps join a bigger colonial server who knows? There's only one problem with this though it's impossible to load a save world in these forums because the maps could be quite big. Could you increase the upload size so we can share each other's worlds? Perhaps a special thread designated just for world sharing? Hope I'm not asking for too much as you've already got your hands full but if you have the time to spare could you please think about it? Thanks again @red51