bitbydeath
Gold Member
I hope at Xmas time you make it snow, this game would look soooo good with everything covered in snow.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
The Tomorrow Children Beta Announced
- Thread starter nbnt
- Start date
wapplew
Member
I would like to know too, that's stop me from growing my apple farm.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Well, we don't really want to just TELL people what to do, more tell them what they CAN do. With the windows this weekend being what they are we can understand wanting to get right to it though.
Mandate is the building limit, and you can see the numbers on the right of the town durability bar which you bring up by pressing L3. When you pick items to craft at the workbench, there's a number to the upper right of the picture, which is the Mandate Cost for that item.
Saplings have a mandate cost as well, 5 I believe.
IbizaPocholo
NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
Agree on all of that.The game need better tutorials/guides to understand how to play the game.Because in this state i see a lot of players lost/frustrated for not knowing how to play/do it.The game is huge and needs more tutorial/explain things.
Design choice? ok.But with this only the dedicated players are going to spend their time to understand the game and give it a try.
wapplew
Member
How do you expand the limit?
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
There actually are a LOT of text popups to explain things (like the apples) as well, but they're unobtrusive so many probably just skip them or let them fade out. There's also a terminal (that has to be crafted) with info on various aspects of gameplay.
Hard to find that sweet spot...
Hard to find that sweet spot...
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
You can raise the limit by earning monuments, which are like town wide achievements. Some are pretty easy to unlock to provide a quick way to raise the limit, and you can see the unlock conditions by examining the central monument in town.
but with food and wood being so rare (on the field) and so important in every aspect, if random people who are still not familiar with the game just go and build random stuff then you're basically screwed
you can't build domiciles because there's no wood
no domiciles means no town hall
no town hall means no police station
no police station means no bullet shells to use on your turrets
no workable turrets means your town will not be able to defend from attacks
not being able to defend from attacks means you need to repair the buildings/build them again if destroyed
but you need wood (which you don't have in the 1st place ) to repair/build buildings
i think a dedicated farm is going to be one of the most important things for a town to thrive
imo early on people should just build domiciles and farm, maybe tie what you're able to build to your level, at level 1 and 2, only be able to build domiciles and saplings for example
You can also access at any time from the Options screen -> Town Info -> Square button (Monument info)
Alright so I got to play it from 12:50PM CST to 3:40PM CST (Had to cut off 20min. early to go to work) and I got to say I really enjoyed it. Went from a game that I saw a few cool videos of but not really being interested, to me legitimately wanting to buy this day one. It helped immensely that the people in my town got the hang of things pretty quickly. Yeah the first hour or so people were wasting a lot of resources on the workbench, but considering this was most people's first few hours with the game, I was super impressed at how the town was going by the end of the 4 hrs.
Also remember that right now *everyone* doesn't know what they are doing but within a few hours of play you'll have players who are beginning to get a grasp and you'll see them doing things, which will teach you various aspects naturally.
So a burst server load concentrated beta test isn't the best environment for a natural learning curve... is something we've learnt from this beta test
So a burst server load concentrated beta test isn't the best environment for a natural learning curve... is something we've learnt from this beta test
wapplew
Member
Oh, no wonder those tree grow 3 apple in such short time! Thanks little human old lady.
Farmer is really fun!
Lord of Castamere
Member
Sadly, I'm not going to get to play. Still have 53 hours left on my download.
If you get tech up they carry around flashlights too.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Yes, eventually the little people contribute too!
AbandonedTrolley
Member
Just got an invite, downloading now then will give it a try.
wapplew
Member
Noooooo! One session left. You better release the game soon after!
serversurfer
Member
Okay, positive stuff first. For the most part, I like all of the new mechanics. The new toys seem pretty cool, and I like the way we can develop and customize our towns now, so kudos for all of that stuff. Massive improvements over the alpha all round. At first I was a bit frustrated with my inability to get shit done, but I realized a lot of stuff is now gated by town progress, which is cool, so I set about hopping the gates.
I figured out we needed a cop shop before we could build much of anything to defend the town with, so I figured I'd build one of those. While it doesn't require a ridiculous amount of materials, it took enough of each that it was hard for our fledgling town to get enough of both resources at once to actually get it built, especially when we were getting hammered by monsters with no way to do anything about it. With no obvious access to Sharp Elbows anymore, I didn't wanna hog the bench waiting for it to become build-able, so I mostly just dicked around town, checking the bench periodically, until the JP block ended.
Things were running a bit better today, and it wasn't terribly long before I was finally able to puzzle up a police station. I nabbed it from the conveyor and ran to an out of the way spot to place it, hoping its specific location wouldn't matter much, because the town center was becoming rather clogged with buildings, and I figured we should start expanding out a bit.
So I set it down and lined it up and discovered I didn't have enough Mandate to build it. I wasn't really sure what Mandate was or where it came from, but I guessed ours got used up by the dozens of residences and other random crap clogging the town. So it occurred to me I might need to upgrade the Town Hall to increase mandate, and sure enough, there was a counter over the hopper door, and a Coal icon right on it, so I ran off to collect some.
Which brings me to my biggest gripe with the alpha wasted effort and it's no better in the beta, unfortunately, but I may have thought of a solution. I think the asynchronous networking is actually a really cool mechanic, but it's hella frustrating when you're trying to pick shit up, because you can't see who else is trying to do so.
So if I'm standing there with two invisible comrades and there are three chunks of coal on the ground and we all reach for the nearest one, only one user ends up picking up the coal, and the other two users watch an animation of their character trying to pick up the coal, only to have it snatched away by someone else. So the two players who have nothing to show for their effort now turn to the next chunk of coal and try again, and of course, only one of them ends up with it, so the Unluckiest Comrade finally nabs that last piece.
So now the town has performed six grabs, and only collected three resources for their efforts. Hardly a model of efficiency. The idea that five clones can reach in to a pile of fifteen apples and there's a possibility of four of them coming away with nothing is kinda ridiculous, which brings us to my possible solution.
Is there any way we could treat a pile of Apples as a Pile of Apples? So if there's a dozen apples laying on the ground and you Grab, it just takes one from the Pile? If ten clones Grab at the Pile simultaneously, then they all ten get apples. If thirteen clones Grab at the Pile, then one will come up short. Piles are nice and socialist too.
If it's too late to implement Piles, then maybe there can be some sort of spillover behavior? So if I grab for an apple and somebody beats me to it, instead just making me sit through the failure animation again, can you maybe first check if there are any other grab-able objects in range, preferably prioritizing other apples? Speaking of "in range," targeting is a bit fidgety, especially when you're scrambling to not be beat again. Lots of times I pushed towards an object because I was too far away to grab it, or there was another object between me and the one I wanted, and I'd end up standing directly on top of the desired object, making it untargetable.
Oh, speaking of desired objects and prioritization, it'd be nice if there was a way to prioritize the resource you're looking for, so you can reach in to the resource salad dumped off by the bus and come away with the coal you need to upgrade the Town Hall so you can finally place the cop shop you were finally able to build.
So yeah, coal. As luck would have it, just as I discovered I needed it, the bus pulled up and unloaded a dozen or so pieces, along with a bunch of other stuff. Thanks to the aforementioned difficulties in grabbing stuff, I only managed to come away with three pieces, all of which ended up in my knapsack. Oh well, I could only carry one more anyway, given that my knapsack was still stuck at 3 despite having spent all five of my upgrade points on strength.
So I dash over to the Town Hall with my prize, expecting a Deposit prompt to appear like when you approach the silos, but nothing happened. I hop around and run in to it from a couple of different angles, but nothing. I manually held out my knapsack and jammed it in to the door, but still no love. I hopped around, hitting buttons until I eventually figured out how to empty my bag on the ground. Certain I'd figured out the problem, I grabbed a cube of coal and jammed it in to the hopper.
Nada. At this point I'd been dicking around for a couple of minutes, and I stood there with my square peg, trying to figure out how to make it fit in the square hole, marked with a square right on it when it hit me. "Fuck me. They still haven't fixed the damned icons."
You guys are still using squares to represent the spheres, and circles to represent the cubes. You haven't even flipped the crystal icon to match the object. How can this be?? ><
So, that's still a thing. After finally realizing I was looking for metal, I started collecting that instead, growing more and more frustrated with object targeting. Like I said, it's no worse or better than the alpha was, but it had to be done for the town to progress, so I couldn't really distract myself with the workbench like I did last time.
Those are the two big complaints, same as last time, so I'm really hoping they get addressed in some way before launch. I really don't know what the holdup on the icons is. Anyway, other random, minor observations
Perhaps requiring players to craft the "How to Play" kiosk wasn't the wisest move. <3 I do think the kiosk itself is cute, but it should probably be part of the starter kit. I was thinking it would give noobs something to do while waiting for the bus, but embedding the screen in either side of Labor would be a good idea too. whynotboth.gif
I think I'm gonna spend more time just exploring the UI next block. That's normally the first thing I do when I sit down with a new game, but due to the short, limited blocks, I skipped all of that stuff and just got to "playing," sorta forgetting that stuff like learning the UI is one of my favorite parts. lol
I think Duck said we don't get paid for placing resources on the auto-loader? Any particular reason for this? It seems like a pretty vital link in the supply chain:
Speaking of the bus, given how vital it is to the flow of resources, it seems like an awfully weak link. Dylan mentioned this is a sandbox, and that's all well and good, but it's way too easy to impede the bus. At least, I'm assuming that's why sometimes it never shows up. It'd also be nice if it dumped its contents in a sorted fashion, especially if we can't prioritize grabs. Also, is there a reason it now offloads in to the passenger area instead of the cargo area? Because now it waits until departure before auto-loading? If that's an issue, can we have inbound and outbound cargo zones, maybe?
Come to think of it, the ideal solution would be to offload in to neat piles directly next to the appropriate silo. Then comrades can stand near the metal silo, wait for the inbound shipment, and either load it straight in to the silo, or cart it off to Town Hall as needed. But this way you'll at least know where to be and when to get what you need. If there's nothing specific you need, you can just stand there and fill silos. If that makes loading silos "too easy," just adjust Toil accordingly.
After reading the thread, I saw that I can go to the black market to get my knapsack increased. Wouldn't have guessed that, but I didn't "waste" time shopping. I did look through the perks and didn't notice my Sharp Elbows anywhere
10 points to get a single bag upgrade sounds like a lot, but I guess this is a short taste of the game, and that stuff will add up over time.
The camera is totally crazy when you're riding the bus. Never got knocked off the bus though, so if a barfy camera is the tradeoff, I guess I'll take it. lol
You can't look at the Credits when the server is down. And it's called Credit instead. =/
Anyway, I don't want to come off as completely critical here. I do think the game is clever and a ton of fun. I'm just trying to think of all the things I can think of that need addressing while there's still time to address them. Most of it is just minor balancing stuff, and the icons are an easy enough fix (I assumed ) The only major issue IMO is fighting over resources; we're supposed to be working together, not competing. I noticed you do get a single Toil point if someone snatches something away from you, but that's not the real issue, which is all the wasted time and effort. Not to mention the fact that it's kinda infuriating. I suppose in the full game I'll be able to distract myself with other endeavors, but it still seems like something that should be addressed if there's still time. I think Piles or Spillover Targeting should alleviate a lot of the issue, and the latter should be easy enough to implement. Either way, you'll wanna coalesce your grabs server side and then dole out resources based on user prefs and availability. And again, it'd be nice to be able to grab only what it is you're looking for to complete your current task (assuming there's some in the pile to grab).
I figured out we needed a cop shop before we could build much of anything to defend the town with, so I figured I'd build one of those. While it doesn't require a ridiculous amount of materials, it took enough of each that it was hard for our fledgling town to get enough of both resources at once to actually get it built, especially when we were getting hammered by monsters with no way to do anything about it. With no obvious access to Sharp Elbows anymore, I didn't wanna hog the bench waiting for it to become build-able, so I mostly just dicked around town, checking the bench periodically, until the JP block ended.
Things were running a bit better today, and it wasn't terribly long before I was finally able to puzzle up a police station. I nabbed it from the conveyor and ran to an out of the way spot to place it, hoping its specific location wouldn't matter much, because the town center was becoming rather clogged with buildings, and I figured we should start expanding out a bit.
So I set it down and lined it up and discovered I didn't have enough Mandate to build it. I wasn't really sure what Mandate was or where it came from, but I guessed ours got used up by the dozens of residences and other random crap clogging the town. So it occurred to me I might need to upgrade the Town Hall to increase mandate, and sure enough, there was a counter over the hopper door, and a Coal icon right on it, so I ran off to collect some.
Which brings me to my biggest gripe with the alpha wasted effort and it's no better in the beta, unfortunately, but I may have thought of a solution. I think the asynchronous networking is actually a really cool mechanic, but it's hella frustrating when you're trying to pick shit up, because you can't see who else is trying to do so.
So if I'm standing there with two invisible comrades and there are three chunks of coal on the ground and we all reach for the nearest one, only one user ends up picking up the coal, and the other two users watch an animation of their character trying to pick up the coal, only to have it snatched away by someone else. So the two players who have nothing to show for their effort now turn to the next chunk of coal and try again, and of course, only one of them ends up with it, so the Unluckiest Comrade finally nabs that last piece.
So now the town has performed six grabs, and only collected three resources for their efforts. Hardly a model of efficiency. The idea that five clones can reach in to a pile of fifteen apples and there's a possibility of four of them coming away with nothing is kinda ridiculous, which brings us to my possible solution.
Is there any way we could treat a pile of Apples as a Pile of Apples? So if there's a dozen apples laying on the ground and you Grab, it just takes one from the Pile? If ten clones Grab at the Pile simultaneously, then they all ten get apples. If thirteen clones Grab at the Pile, then one will come up short. Piles are nice and socialist too.
If it's too late to implement Piles, then maybe there can be some sort of spillover behavior? So if I grab for an apple and somebody beats me to it, instead just making me sit through the failure animation again, can you maybe first check if there are any other grab-able objects in range, preferably prioritizing other apples? Speaking of "in range," targeting is a bit fidgety, especially when you're scrambling to not be beat again. Lots of times I pushed towards an object because I was too far away to grab it, or there was another object between me and the one I wanted, and I'd end up standing directly on top of the desired object, making it untargetable.
Oh, speaking of desired objects and prioritization, it'd be nice if there was a way to prioritize the resource you're looking for, so you can reach in to the resource salad dumped off by the bus and come away with the coal you need to upgrade the Town Hall so you can finally place the cop shop you were finally able to build.
So yeah, coal. As luck would have it, just as I discovered I needed it, the bus pulled up and unloaded a dozen or so pieces, along with a bunch of other stuff. Thanks to the aforementioned difficulties in grabbing stuff, I only managed to come away with three pieces, all of which ended up in my knapsack. Oh well, I could only carry one more anyway, given that my knapsack was still stuck at 3 despite having spent all five of my upgrade points on strength.
So I dash over to the Town Hall with my prize, expecting a Deposit prompt to appear like when you approach the silos, but nothing happened. I hop around and run in to it from a couple of different angles, but nothing. I manually held out my knapsack and jammed it in to the door, but still no love. I hopped around, hitting buttons until I eventually figured out how to empty my bag on the ground. Certain I'd figured out the problem, I grabbed a cube of coal and jammed it in to the hopper.
Nada. At this point I'd been dicking around for a couple of minutes, and I stood there with my square peg, trying to figure out how to make it fit in the square hole, marked with a square right on it when it hit me. "Fuck me. They still haven't fixed the damned icons."
You guys are still using squares to represent the spheres, and circles to represent the cubes. You haven't even flipped the crystal icon to match the object. How can this be?? ><
So, that's still a thing. After finally realizing I was looking for metal, I started collecting that instead, growing more and more frustrated with object targeting. Like I said, it's no worse or better than the alpha was, but it had to be done for the town to progress, so I couldn't really distract myself with the workbench like I did last time.
Those are the two big complaints, same as last time, so I'm really hoping they get addressed in some way before launch. I really don't know what the holdup on the icons is. Anyway, other random, minor observations
Perhaps requiring players to craft the "How to Play" kiosk wasn't the wisest move.
<3 I do think the kiosk itself is cute, but it should probably be part of the starter kit. I was thinking it would give noobs something to do while waiting for the bus, but embedding the screen in either side of Labor would be a good idea too. whynotboth.gifI think I'm gonna spend more time just exploring the UI next block. That's normally the first thing I do when I sit down with a new game, but due to the short, limited blocks, I skipped all of that stuff and just got to "playing," sorta forgetting that stuff like learning the UI is one of my favorite parts. lol
I think Duck said we don't get paid for placing resources on the auto-loader? Any particular reason for this? It seems like a pretty vital link in the supply chain:
- Get it out of the ground.
- Get it on the bus.
- Get it in the silo.
Speaking of the bus, given how vital it is to the flow of resources, it seems like an awfully weak link. Dylan mentioned this is a sandbox, and that's all well and good, but it's way too easy to impede the bus. At least, I'm assuming that's why sometimes it never shows up. It'd also be nice if it dumped its contents in a sorted fashion, especially if we can't prioritize grabs. Also, is there a reason it now offloads in to the passenger area instead of the cargo area? Because now it waits until departure before auto-loading? If that's an issue, can we have inbound and outbound cargo zones, maybe?
Come to think of it, the ideal solution would be to offload in to neat piles directly next to the appropriate silo. Then comrades can stand near the metal silo, wait for the inbound shipment, and either load it straight in to the silo, or cart it off to Town Hall as needed. But this way you'll at least know where to be and when to get what you need. If there's nothing specific you need, you can just stand there and fill silos. If that makes loading silos "too easy," just adjust Toil accordingly.
After reading the thread, I saw that I can go to the black market to get my knapsack increased. Wouldn't have guessed that, but I didn't "waste" time shopping. I did look through the perks and didn't notice my Sharp Elbows anywhere
10 points to get a single bag upgrade sounds like a lot, but I guess this is a short taste of the game, and that stuff will add up over time.
The camera is totally crazy when you're riding the bus. Never got knocked off the bus though, so if a barfy camera is the tradeoff, I guess I'll take it. lol
You can't look at the Credits when the server is down. And it's called Credit instead. =/
Anyway, I don't want to come off as completely critical here. I do think the game is clever and a ton of fun. I'm just trying to think of all the things I can think of that need addressing while there's still time to address them. Most of it is just minor balancing stuff, and the icons are an easy enough fix (I assumed ) The only major issue IMO is fighting over resources; we're supposed to be working together, not competing. I noticed you do get a single Toil point if someone snatches something away from you, but that's not the real issue, which is all the wasted time and effort. Not to mention the fact that it's kinda infuriating. I suppose in the full game I'll be able to distract myself with other endeavors, but it still seems like something that should be addressed if there's still time. I think Piles or Spillover Targeting should alleviate a lot of the issue, and the latter should be easy enough to implement. Either way, you'll wanna coalesce your grabs server side and then dole out resources based on user prefs and availability. And again, it'd be nice to be able to grab only what it is you're looking for to complete your current task (assuming there's some in the pile to grab).
After day 1 the launch day (or maybe for day 1 if we have enough time) we will give you XP for putting stuff in the auto loader.
As for the icon thing, well you get used to it pretty quickly although I did request for it to be changed it was already in printed help sheets and manuals and documentation and stuff and so was very hard to swap. I do agree though.
As for resource collection we have planned a similar solution to your proposed one, in fact a solution that lets you quickly pick 3 items up near you automatically (one by one, but automatically). We haven't had time to test that properly yet so it will be played with after launch.
As for the icon thing, well you get used to it pretty quickly although I did request for it to be changed it was already in printed help sheets and manuals and documentation and stuff and so was very hard to swap. I do agree though.
As for resource collection we have planned a similar solution to your proposed one, in fact a solution that lets you quickly pick 3 items up near you automatically (one by one, but automatically). We haven't had time to test that properly yet so it will be played with after launch.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
Just got back from the official EU forums lol
Thanks for that very detailed feedback, serversurfer. I see D's already taken a look at it as well-good good.
Thanks for that very detailed feedback, serversurfer. I see D's already taken a look at it as well-good good.
Makes sense to chop down trees in town. The second town I spent time in had an organised orchard. But when Godzilla smashed a bunch of buildings (bloody literally walked down a street stomping everything), people basically had no choice but to chop everything down to make wood for repairs. No time to find trees outside.
There is probably a nice sweet spot in terms of farming that you'll figure out eventually. 5 food needed for a sapling to grow another tree. So you should harvest a minimum of 5 fruit from a tree before chopping it down, otherwise it's costing you more than its returning.
bitbydeath
Gold Member
serversurfer
Member
Excellent.
Ahhh, right on. I hadn't anticipated a retail release, but yeah, that stuff can be expensive to change! lol What about changing the objects themselves? I'm guessing their appearance mostly comes from bump maps and other textures being applied to primitives. Would it be feasible to simply swap the primitives, and make Metal be cubes of gold? That might actually be easier than relabeling all the facilities, depending on how that was done. Making the crystals land pointy side up not only makes more sense, but it'd make them easier to spot when hopping between the islands they create in the Void. (That's why you plant them, right? Do they also function as a light source when planted?)
So, spillover and macro? Sounds pretty slick. Any thoughts on prioritizing grabs and/or sorting loads right at the silos? With the latter, the former would be less important, since prioritizing shouldn't be much of an issue if you're just loading up out at the island. Oh, be sure the triple-grabs get distributed fairly, obviously. You don't want the quicker comrade to get all three items while everyone else gets nothing. Coalescing should help there though.
Yeah, like I said, I hope it doesn't come off as harsh, because that's not how it's intended at all. Like everyone else, I think it's pretty awesome and I'll be there Day One, but I figure this kinda stuff could potentially help you guys. <3
show me your skeleton
Member
how does this game look so good? what is it doing differently, the lighting?
FinalStageBoss
Banned
Yea after playing the beta day 1 purchase is guaranteed. Please don't make me wait long!
started it yesterday while it was open. played the introduction. Arrived at the first town, switched to another one and just got disconnected. tried to reconnect a couple of times, with the same result. Too bad :/
Still love the game (from what i saw on streams etc) and will definitely be a day 1 purchase.
Still love the game (from what i saw on streams etc) and will definitely be a day 1 purchase.
PodcastFips
Member
People are still getting invites? Hmm, I will keep an eye on my mailbox.
is there a good video that shows all the game's features? I couldn't figure out what was going on while playing. other players would poof in and out of existence, the resources would pile up and then disappear without any change in town.
when trying to switch to another town it went black and I couldn't do anything, basically gave up.
I want to like that game, but figuring it out for me was just impossible. D:
when trying to switch to another town it went black and I couldn't do anything, basically gave up.
I want to like that game, but figuring it out for me was just impossible. D:
Prototype Viktor
Member
have friends be represented as a blue stick figure eating porridge if they are near you
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
Watching gameplay vids on Youtube. Looks fantastically unique.
Reckheim
Member
isnt there one more play sesion tonight?
It is. The time flies by when you play. You're always busy with 'work' but it's relaxing at the same time. Really looking forward to getting back into it tonight.
Family Fry
Member
This is an awesome screenshot!
Thanks!
I'm looking forward to one last test tonight, explore that nostril again.
Now I have a little grasp on what to do, I'm sure it will tick along nicely, village will become like a well oiled machine.
GwyndolinCinder
Member
So i guess ill check this out later today finally, i still have no idea what this game actually is!
I had a lot of fun with this last night. Did admittedly spend a short time wandering around the town at first, not quite sure what to do and feeling a little overwhelmed. I knew we were short on wood for example & I could see other players moving resources around but wasn't sure where they were getting them from. Soon started to figure stuff out though so all was good.
Gotta say, the 3hrs flew by and I've been itching to play some more since the servers went down. Glad there's another test tonight as I can't wait to get back in there. Absolutely love the art direction too.
Definitely a day one purchase for me so hope that's not too far away!
Gotta say, the 3hrs flew by and I've been itching to play some more since the servers went down. Glad there's another test tonight as I can't wait to get back in there. Absolutely love the art direction too.
Definitely a day one purchase for me so hope that's not too far away!