Development Update - Resource nodes, actions and more

[Akuzic 136]

I don't really get, why are people mad about the new quickbar thing? It seems cleaner to use than the current system, not sure why its a bad thing to have a better UI. There are alot of things that make Wurm very unique and fun to play, but I don't log in every day and think "Oh boy, I'm excited to fumble about in menus to do the actions I actually want!", instead I log in, try to do things, and get frustrated by the quirks in the UI, like dismounting a horse on overaged trees but harvesting very old ones, or flipping through my toolbelts/scan my inventory to get the item I actually want to craft with.

[TheTrickster 2,290]

13 hours ago, Lisimba said:

You severely underestimate just how much work this is.

Given the rate of development and new content releases on WU servers.  I don't think so.

 

Actually, that isn't just an outsider's opinion.  We had an ex-dev describe how quickly and easily some of this stuff can be added to the game.  

 

 

[TheTrickster 2,290]

13 hours ago, Atndy said:

Wurm isn't the only thing they run.

Actually, it pretty much is.  GCG other "businesses" don't seem active at all.

[Akuzic 136]

20 minutes ago, TheTrickster said:

Given the rate of development and new content releases on WU servers.  I don't think so.

 

Actually, that isn't just an outsider's opinion.  We had an ex-dev describe how quickly and easily some of this stuff can be added to the game.  

 

 

There are some things that I absolutely understand taking awhile. Completely revamping the action system? Introducting an entire new skill, or revamping an old one to the point its basically a new thing? That I understand taking time.

But there are frankly a ridiculous amount of suggestions people have made over the years that would take comparatively very little effort. Waxing food and preserving corpses; two simple things people have suggested over the years. Why do we have an incredibly complicated cooking system, if there are like three foods that are worth it, the rest are objectively worse and more complicated, and they all decay so fast you cant use their models as decor? Countless decorational items and mobs have been suggested, that would be incredibly simple to add. And I know they are easy to add, because they add one every month locked behind a paywall to try and get more money out of players. Small things like that, that have been repeatedly asked for over and over for years, I have hard time believing are not done simply because it takes too much time, or effort.

[TheTrickster 2,290]

3 hours ago, Akuzic said:

But there are frankly a ridiculous amount of suggestions people have made over the years that would take comparatively very little effort.

Yep, and I think we will see a number of these coming out behind the silver curtain.

 

I actually think that Wurm skins can be really good - but the way they have been implemented (before GCG) has always been sub-par.  Imagine the power of making a long sword, and the last step in the process is picking your preference of model for it.  No change to performance or stats, just a choice of skin at creation.  There could still be paid-for skins, but just think of the variety and richness in the game if each item of armour for instance had a choice of a few "styles" at creation.  The increase in good will, and playability, would have to be pay off in the long run.  

 

I initially installed Wurm because I thought I would be able to make a log cabin.  That was almost half a decade ago, and it turns out people had been asking for this for a decade before I even installed the game.  17 years? Forget dog year, in game years that's is literally multiple ages, and there are still no log cabins.

 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2023 by TheTrickster

[Lisimba 779]

4 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

Given the rate of development and new content releases on WU servers.  I don't think so.

 

That was in reaction to "Any other game would have been throwing updates out weekly or monthly,". Outside of minor stuff like skins, that's just not realistic.

 

4 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

Actually, that isn't just an outsider's opinion.  We had an ex-dev describe how quickly and easily some of this stuff can be added to the game.  

 

Adding it is only part of the effort, and in many cases it's only a minority part, at that. That's the issue with all this "it's just one line of code". It's like filling out a crossword puzzle. Actually writing down the answers is easy, it's figuring out what the answers have to be that's a lot of work. Especially once it starts involving multiple stakeholders.

 

Consider the recent rift update thread. That was a two week back and forth about mechanics and turning and so on. If you took a snapshot of how everything was decided at the end and time traveled it back to the start (and decreed that that's how it was going to be so discussion over), how much of that time could you shave off? Probably the vast majority of it. But we don't have time travel like that, so a lot of time is spent on talking and planning and trying stuff out and people deciding what to actually *do*.

 

If a dev tells you something will take X time, double it, then multiply it by two, then add two weeks, and then it's probably still optimistic.

 

4 hours ago, Akuzic said:

Small things like that, that have been repeatedly asked for over and over for years, I have hard time believing are not done simply because it takes too much time, or effort.

 

Why *do* you think they aren't added? The devs just don't feel like doing it?

[Tukodama 316]

1 hour ago, Lisimba said:

If a dev tells you something will take X time, double it, then multiply it by two, then add two weeks, and then it's probably still optimistic.

 

1 hour ago, Lisimba said:

The devs just don't feel like doing it?

 

You must remember these are volunteer devs and to my knowledge other than "game stuff" they are not compensated in any way.  Someone with better knowledge may know otherwise if devs get compensation.  From comments in various threads this is a very demanding and grouchy player base that hold volunteers accountable for how the game is developed.  As we have seen, volunteering can be a thankless job sometimes.  Devs and other staff may have other full time jobs, take time away from family, friends and other interests to work on the game that you enjoy playing.  As long as this game is managed on the cheap, players should be thankful for anything workable that is added to the game.   

 

Players should focus their frustration at management for either not compensating staff or not hiring new staff to lighten the workload of volunteers.  There is a saying in North America, "you have to spend money to make money."  I have no idea what management is doing and I am not sure they know themselves.  We are in mid September and the fact the website, which should have been fixed ASAP has not been redone, says a lot.  Hiring a few paid staff or financial compensation for volunteers would go a long way toward healing some wounds and moving development of the game forward.  Buying, rebranding and turning around a company is tough business and if Krister wants to get that massive ROI and raise the stock price, he needs to start moving forward and getting things done.        

[DannyUK 212]

6 hours ago, Akuzic said:

There are some things that I absolutely understand taking awhile. Completely revamping the action system? Introducting an entire new skill, or revamping an old one to the point its basically a new thing? That I understand taking time.

But there are frankly a ridiculous amount of suggestions people have made over the years that would take comparatively very little effort. Waxing food and preserving corpses; two simple things people have suggested over the years. Why do we have an incredibly complicated cooking system, if there are like three foods that are worth it, the rest are objectively worse and more complicated, and they all decay so fast you cant use their models as decor? Countless decorational items and mobs have been suggested, that would be incredibly simple to add. And I know they are easy to add, because they add one every month locked behind a paywall to try and get more money out of players. Small things like that, that have been repeatedly asked for over and over for years, I have hard time believing are not done simply because it takes too much time, or effort.

Yes and WU Sklotopilis does a great job of this, I can't speak about other servers as I never played on them but I know this server works hard on updates and such. The ones you surggest waxing food and corpses were implemented a long time ago now, fine example of WU updating more than WO. It is just a shame the people working on mods for WU don't have access to the code that WO now uses.

 

It would be interesting to know just how many things were implemented in WO from suggestions here, a few I imagine but nowhere near the amount they should have been doing. I mean it is the players who play the game and pay money for it, if enough people like the idea it should at least be thought about and discussed.

[ftoz 122]

it look nice, but question is how much FPS drops it cause. Will be also nice possibility turn off all new features. Some menu add i dont like, in my opinion wurm need clear unused menu not add new. 

[Akuzic 136]

9 hours ago, Lisimba said:

 

That was in reaction to "Any other game would have been throwing updates out weekly or monthly,". Outside of minor stuff like skins, that's just not realistic.

 

 

Adding it is only part of the effort, and in many cases it's only a minority part, at that. That's the issue with all this "it's just one line of code". It's like filling out a crossword puzzle. Actually writing down the answers is easy, it's figuring out what the answers have to be that's a lot of work. Especially once it starts involving multiple stakeholders.

 

Consider the recent rift update thread. That was a two week back and forth about mechanics and turning and so on. If you took a snapshot of how everything was decided at the end and time traveled it back to the start (and decreed that that's how it was going to be so discussion over), how much of that time could you shave off? Probably the vast majority of it. But we don't have time travel like that, so a lot of time is spent on talking and planning and trying stuff out and people deciding what to actually *do*.

 

If a dev tells you something will take X time, double it, then multiply it by two, then add two weeks, and then it's probably still optimistic.

 

 

Why *do* you think they aren't added? The devs just don't feel like doing it?

90 to 95% of a job in coding is actually thinking out the solution, just as you said; the actual implementation is pretty easy. Especially for simplier features that would not interact much with others. I completely understand that the development team is small, mostly volunteer, and busy, and would never expect things to be added within a week. Even a month I can imagine would be tight for them.

But these are features that have been asked for, and been added as WU mods, for years. They are not difficult things to add.

 

Here, lets use waxed food as an example; I'd say that's more complicated than a skin, but not quite as much as reworking the entire action system. - There's really three steps in here; Waxing the food, making sure you can eat/cook with it, and making sure it doesnt decay on deed. All three of these pretty much already exist.

1) Add a new interaction - wax + food item to wax it. You can use the same code you use to wrap items. Check the source ID to make sure its beeswax, take off lets say 10% of the target item's weight off the source (disallowing if theres not enough wax), and wax it. To store it as waxed, add a new variable to your items called isWaxed(). Or maybe you dont want to store it there because of how many items there are; use the auxdata to store it where you store all the other food states. You wont need those anymore, since you can't cook with it anyway.

2) When you would taste, cook with, or eat the food, check its aux data; for recipes you have to loop through all the ingredents anyway, for eating you already have various checks you can mimic like if the temperature is too hot or if you are already too full, for tasting you can add a similar check
3) for decay; you already have this kind of code with wrapping. Check, is the food waxed and on deed? Set the decay multiplier to negative. Now it wont decay on deed. If its off deed, can either have it decay like normal or like wrapped or something if you dont want random waxed pizzas piling up

Now is it likely that easy? Probably not. I'm sure there are quirks about WOs code that I'm just not privy to. But given that I came up with a somewhat viable looking solution in about 30 minutes of perusing through undocumented WU Code, and its already been done multiple times over multiple servers on WU, I find it difficult to believe it would be that big of a task for the WO team.

Why is it not done? Who knows? I fully admit that the dev team is small, and does not have enough time. Maybe they didnt think it was a priority. Maybe they have some random quirk about it that they dont like and think would be bad for the game. But given they never comment on these things and now we dont even have a CRM that can stay silent on it, we never will know. But I'm pretty sure its not because its too difficult to add.
Ultimately, these kind of changes are what bring life into a game. Reworking the action system, or adding a new complex system for a skill, are great and all, but its the smaller content packs that actually drive the game, and that type of content is sorely lacking from WO.

The other half of this, of course, is that Wurm should absolutely not have such a small ,volunteer dev team. Maybe this is just me, but any games I have been involved with in the past that have a similar dev team, and a similarly very slow work rate, are volunteer projects that are either a one time small payment, or are completely volunteer based as they are fan projects of other games. Wurm is a game that is asking to have slow, volunteer based development, have an expensive monthly subscription, and also want me to shell out money every now and then for microtransactions. The amount of money this game can ask for is on par with what I would expect with a modern, fully managed MMO, not a small lil volunteer project. That, which is entirely the fault of the management and not the development team, I find equally if not more frustrating, and kind of insulting.

 

Edited September 11, 2023 by Akuzic

[TheTrickster 2,290]

7 hours ago, Akuzic said:

The other half of this, of course, is that Wurm should absolutely not have such a small ,volunteer dev team. Maybe this is just me, but any games I have been involved with in the past that have a similar dev team, and a similarly very slow work rate, are volunteer projects that are either a one time small payment, or are completely volunteer based as they are fan projects of other games. Wurm is a game that is asking to have slow, volunteer based development, have an expensive monthly subscription, and also want me to shell out money every now and then for microtransactions. The amount of money this game can ask for is on par with what I would expect with a modern, fully managed MMO, not a small lil volunteer project. That, which is entirely the fault of the management and not the development team, I find equally if not more frustrating, and kind of insulting.

^this.

[Dao 145]

Patch Notes 12-SEP-2023

 

Quote

For each part added to the colossus, the builder will have a chance to get a rift point

 

Thank you for giving me a chance to build more and more.

 

 

 

[phennexion 170]

Actually a meaningful and great update!! Love to see WURM making some forward progress!

[Homestead 327]

Loving the condensed message thing.

 

THANK YOU! for dye-able quivers!  My Lib's outfit is now complete.

 

[monsterix 94]

Quote

• Max arrow count that can be stored in the bundle is scaled with the players fletching skill. Min 2, max 41 at around 100 skill.

Really 100 for creating bundle of 41 arrow? Is that bit too much?

[TimHaus 67]

I'm wondering about the colossus persistency after rift close. Will those huge oversized structures, far more bigger than any tree or house, stand for years in the pretty landscape ?

[Zerobyte 289]

35 minutes ago, TimHaus said:

I'm wondering about the colossus persistency after rift close. Will those huge oversized structures, far more bigger than any tree or house, stand for years in the pretty landscape ?

I was wondering the same thing

[Finnn 3,322]

by design no, should poof once the rift is closed

[Syd 5]

On 8/30/2023 at 12:09 AM, Samool said:

Resource Nodes

 

Coming soon to the public test servers, we will be introducing a complete replacement for the existing foraging, botanizing, and snow collecting systems. Currently, whether or not a tile can be foraged or botanized, or have snowballs collected from it, is completely invisible until you try to perform the action. On top of that, the results of foraging and botanizing are very random, selecting from mostly the same pool of items no matter what, making it difficult to search for anything specific, even if you know what the possible results are.

Replacing all this will be a system where specific resource nodes, with visible graphics, can spawn on tiles randomly over time. You can then gather items from them similarly to how foraging currently works, destroying the resource node in the process. This will be an improvement over the current system in several ways:

• Foraging and botanizing resources being visible on tiles will make it easier to find what you're looking for, in addition to adding some much-needed visusal variety to the world.
• Each type of resource node will have its own list of items, so finding specific items should be easier. For instance, if you're looking for rock shards, you can keep an eye out for "rubble" nodes, or if you're looking for branches and sprouts, you might want to look for "undergrowth" nodes.
• Since there will be many types of nodes, the number of potential items has been greatly expanded. All items from the current foraging and botanizing systems will be available, in addition to many more.
• Types of resource nodes that can appear on a tile, and how likely they are, depends on many factors, including tile type, altitude, season, and more. This means that foraging and botanizing will be possible on nearly any type of tile, and that both geography and in-game time of year will have a much greater impact on gameplay. For example, you might find dune grasses on sand near the water, lichen growing on pavement, or even fungus growing in caves. Some uncommon tiles, such as enchanted tiles and mycelium, even have their own resource nodes that cannot be found anywhere else.
• Which items you find from a specific type of resource node, and how likely they are, can depend on similar factors. For example, as in the current system, woad is more common on steppe, but this also extends to certain plants being more common in certain seasons, near water, or several other factors.
• "Snow" resource nodes will not only accumulate during the winter, but also at high altitude. The minimum altitude for snow to gather will vary depending on time of year, so the tallest mountain peaks will always have some even in Summer, and some lower-altitude areas may only have any during Autumn and Winter. These altitude limits are determined on a per-server basis, so that every server should have roughly the same percentage of tiles above the snow line.
• Skill will matter more than it does now. Quality will be determined in a fairly similar way to how it is now, but the difficulty of foraging or botanizing is determined by the type of resource node, the type of tile, and the specific item gathered from it. Some special items may also require a certain amount of skill to gather at all, or may become more likely at higher skill.

 

The current foraging and botanizing system has another problem: There is currently no way to know what possible items you might find when foraging or botanizing without looking it up on Wurmpedia or some other resource.

To solve this, a "Lore" option has been added to both tiles and resource nodes themselves. When used on a tile, Lore will tell you what types of resource nodes might spawn there under current conditions, in order of how likely they are. When used on a resource node, you will instead receive a list of what items you could possibly harvest from it, also ordered by likelihood. Skill will also matter here, as some higher-difficulty items or resource nodes might be hidden from the Lore command with insufficient skill, but you will always be told when this happens. This should allow players to determine for themselves what they might be able to find and under what conditions, without needing to use the wiki or any other source.

 

This feature also replaces the current random terrain decorations such as stones on dirt or ferns, which are a common point of new player confusion.

 

 This seems like a very nice improvement, any idea when we can expect this to be on live servers?

[Ekcin 2,425]

What would interest me concerning the resource nodes, is whether traditional foraging and botanizing is scrapped, ore can still be executed as before. I, for my part, do forage/botanize widely for two purpses, namely grinding the skill first, and getting a few coins here and then, thirdly, to obtain treasure maps with some luck (weren't lucky for months despite daily 20-30 minutes of foraging/botanizing).

 

The coins lost significance widely though still appreciated, and for treasure maps, there seems to be a lull, either bad luck for me, or the devs nerfed the chance. But losing the skill grind would not be good.

[Breezzy 50]

Awesome! Thank you 

[Wulfmaer 413]

On 8/30/2023 at 12:09 AM, Samool said:

Coming soon to the public test servers, we will be introducing a complete replacement for the existing foraging, botanizing, and snow collecting systems. Currently, whether or not a tile can be foraged or botanized, or have snowballs collected from it, is completely invisible until you try to perform the action. On top of that, the results of foraging and botanizing are very random, selecting from mostly the same pool of items no matter what, making it difficult to search for anything specific, even if you know what the possible results are.

 

I noticed that this was on the test server, at least the other day. Looks very interesting. It would be good to have something said when this is ready for testing, and feedback.

[topkos 504]

you can like, unlike, or kinda of either one of the new features, but I can say that I'm really happy that the dev team is working on something. That by itself is wonderful news.

[Gwiz 151]

On 9/17/2023 at 1:08 PM, Ekcin said:

What would interest me concerning the resource nodes, is whether traditional foraging and botanizing is scrapped, ore can still be executed as before. I, for my part, do forage/botanize widely for two purpses, namely grinding the skill first, and getting a few coins here and then, thirdly, to obtain treasure maps with some luck (weren't lucky for months despite daily 20-30 minutes of foraging/botanizing).

 

The coins lost significance widely though still appreciated, and for treasure maps, there seems to be a lull, either bad luck for me, or the devs nerfed the chance. But losing the skill grind would not be good.

 

I was wondering about this too.  Foraging for coins is how I funded my first prem time and first deed payments.  I probably would not be playing this game two years later if I had to fork out RL cash before I could actually experience what this game was about.

 

I am probably being skeptical here, but based on the last couple of months, this strikes me as a sneaky way to eliminate the kingdom coin redistribution system in order to increase GCG company profits.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Gwiz
additional thought

[Lisimba 779]

28 minutes ago, Gwiz said:

I am probably being skeptical here, but based on the last couple of months, this strikes me as a sneaky way to eliminate the kingdom coin redistribution system in order to increase GCG company profits.

 

Wouldn't you need to see if the new system also distributes coins before even bringing up that claim?