Post by PJOZeus in Terraformental comments

Viewing post in Terraformental comments

This is going to be a long post.

First playthrough was actually really fun and I'd happily see more - although the fact that your water supply would be limited should've been made more apparent sooner (in that you can't fix it), or the option to siphon a pouch into a bottle for storage

Initially didn't like the rebirth and replaying the same starting segment (although did get curious about powerlevelling the destruction trait)

Worth noting the exploration trait is far lower on the second run, and it's unclear exactly what the blue bars and their length mean aside from you progress quicker

As others have said, the skip derelict rover check doesn't disappear when you visit it

The 'Destroy main door' check should be shown to you to know it's an option even if you turn power on before examining the door (First run)

Inventory/tasks could be a predetermined order (organising) rather than as you discover them, as well as ideally renewable sources of materials should be prioritised in consumption over finite ones (Water pouch being drunk before small water bottle -suspect it's just an order problem but it's a pain in the arse for the rover trip)

Would appreciate mention of any other cryopods in either initial exploration or a second check over when your life isn't hanging in the balance, to ensure you aren't damning anyone else you're leaving behind (or hey maybe you already have some other plans for that already)

Being able to harvest a resource when full to top off your metres would be good (otherwise cancelling when a full inventory is still fine- like an additional prompt to harvest despite full although I acknowledge this could be exploited regarding levels)

And a prompt that "Doing this will disable other actions" would be good too, even if you want mistakes and death to be a core gameplay element (by the way- two fullscreen buttons on the browser version)

Ultimately, definitely want to see more development and anticipating where this could go, certainly wouldn't mind being a guinea pig, keep up the good work, hope to see it on the front page of Itch in time

Shadowsand27 days ago (1 edit)

Thank you so much for the kind words and detailed response! I definitely agree that having a better indication of limited vs unlimited actions would be useful, though I'm unsure how I'd do that without making the action buttons larger to fit a done/max counter... An icon or different colour would work, but people still have to learn what it means in the first place. I'll throw a note on the list to think about for if/when I work on a content update.

I had intended to make tooltips for the skills, which would've broken down your current multipliers, but ran out of time (for my self-imposed deadline). I may be able to fit them into the bugfix patch I'll do in the next few days. That combined with the post-loop breakdown screen should clear things up.

Added note to tweak the 'Force Ground Floor Door' action in the bugfix. It was only actually hidden initially due to a technical limitation which I then fixed for the Admin Door.

I have a few plans for the Action and Inventory panels, but they'll all likely have to wait for the content update. Currently items are consumed in order of how much they restore, which honestly is just a holdover from Increlution, but Terraformental has increasingly become a slightly different style of game, so you may be right that it should change... Yeah, I'll try to fit this into the bugfix.

It can be difficult to decide how much to fit into a single log message, as I didn't want to have a single message scrolling off the screen, or generally put people off reading them. But you do raise a good point that I could add extra 'Explore more carefully' actions once you have access to all the unlimited resources and are stabilised.

As you say, harvesting when full would be very exploitable for farming XP. The closest I'd consider is if your inventory is full, but you're missing enough of the resource that you could instantly consume it, then maaaaybe? But I'd want to build up more of the game, so I have a better idea of what impact that might have on balance before I made that kind of change.

I can definitely add a 'disable other actions' warning of some kind on some actions, but it'd likely be in the content update.

Thanks for the offer - I'll be sure to keep you in mind if I get around to doing beta tests. Though if I'm honest, I doubt I'll get it to the front page (as nice as that would be) xD

PJOZeus27 days ago(+1)

If you have the conviction and dedication, it could go far, *Will* go far - all it takes is time and thought, there's no maybe
You'll do just fine

Bogudan26 days ago

Great demo :)

Want to point out that there is exploit for some of XP in current version coming from the fact that attempting to start harvesting action for 5/5 items still advances time by small amount. So with enough amount of clicking it eventually reaches the point when item is being consumed and harvesting starts.

Shadowsand26 days ago

Ooo, very nice catch. Thanks, I'll add a ticket to fix that in v0.2!

PJOZeus15 days ago

Only just noticed this.. creative feature, got pointed out (yes I knew of it)
If you are going to get rid of it i'd suggest again to consider a collecting whilst full mechanic

It felt annoying enough to do that people wouldn't try to farm it (not casually at least) but it was also a really really useful tool if you were like 0.02 units away from being able to harvest and consume another resource without some other action to queue (used it a fair bit, to top up water as much as possible before setting out- and with the collection times being so fast anyway it was not worthwhile to farm xp from it)

When there's no leaderboard and if it breaks anything it would only be breaking for themselves, I think it's definitely something that could be.. accidentally overlooked, if there won't be a different mechanic to fill the hole

Alternate fixes would probably be too complex to be worth the dev time for now
Thought I should say something before it gets patched and makes it all *even* harder without purpose

Shadowsand15 days ago

That is a fair observation... I'd certainly be happy to allow completing a pickup action to ~99% even when you're full. But I feel allowing actually picking items up when you're full would cause people to accidentally pick things up without realising they're full.

I suppose if it was REALLY wanted then I'd consider adding a button which lets you consume an item early, so long as you have space for at least 90% of it or something? Maybe have a toggle option to automatically do it when you're trying to pick up another of that item? I'll add it to the 'maybe' list for v0.2, but it may be up being pushed back to a later version depending how long things take. I'm going to try and stick to a similar schedule of working on major updates for ~2 weeks then release it, rather than end up feature creeping.

PJOZeus15 days ago

As long as it's a thought, and yeah bi-weekly updates sounds fine
If it's just on the maybe list then as I said, can always overlook this one particular 'feature' until there's an opportunity to contemplate it more - it's useful and not really game breaking

itch.io

Viewing post in Terraformental comments