Kickstarter: StoneHearth . Minecraft + Strategy

[Matrix]

I ended up upping mine to 30, since beta will be coming out 9 month earlier. And from what i remember about mine craft, beta was pretty good already. Will figure out what to do with second digital copy later on.

[fenris]

I supported it, my first kickstarter support ever!

[ColdSteel]

I've been playing around with Qubicle Constructor, which is the tool that RadEnt uses to develop the 3D voxel art assets for StoneHearth. There's a free version and it's pretty fun to play with. Below is my first effort. The banner on the right with the skulls is a goblin banner that I reproduced from a dev screenshot. The green one is a variant. I can see how modding for this game will be a lot of fun.

[ydejin]

I've been playing around with Qubicle Constructor, which is the tool that RadEnt uses to develop the 3D voxel art assets for StoneHearth. There's a free version and it's pretty fun to play with. Below is my first effort. The banner on the right with the skulls is a goblin banner that I reproduced from a dev screenshot. The green one is a variant. I can see how modding for this game will be a lot of fun.

Very nice ColdSteel. The green one looks rather elvish, just the sort of thing the cat in your avatar would be using!!!

[ColdSteel]

Very nice ColdSteel. The green one looks rather elvish, just the sort of thing the cat in your avatar would be using!!!

Yeah, I think that kitten looks like a little elven ranger. By the way, the devs mentioned in one of their streams that they would love to add elves to the game as a playable race down the line. They talked some about them living in trees and the build mechanics being way different from humans and dwarves. Like maybe morphing living trees into homes and buildings. Sounded interesting.

[ydejin]

Very nice ColdSteel. The green one looks rather elvish, just the sort of thing the cat in your avatar would be using!!!

Yeah, I think that kitten looks like a little elven ranger. By the way, the devs mentioned in one of their streams that they would love to add elves to the game as a playable race down the line. They talked some about them living in trees and the build mechanics being way different from humans and dwarves. Like maybe morphing living trees into homes and buildings. Sounded interesting.

That sounds awesome!

[hentzau]

Just got notice of the Alpha of this scheduled to be released on the 30th.

[Sepiche]

Looks like they also announced that you can claim your key now on the humble bundle site in preparation for release. Directions are here:
http://stonehearth.net/" target="_blank

[hentzau]

I grabbed the alpha, but had a lot of problems doing anything with it. So I'm going to try it again later, after a reboot.

And now, after that glowing review, along with the alpha they gave me a key to give away to someone. Anyone interested?

[hentzau]

Needed to increase to fullscreen. i was missing most of the controls I needed, plus the clicking spots were off.

Playing around with it now. Made a couple of mistakes already...they don't give you many hints to get going.

[ydejin]

Needed to increase to fullscreen. i was missing most of the controls I needed, plus the clicking spots were off.

Playing around with it now. Made a couple of mistakes already...they don't give you many hints to get going.

I was definitely confused on how to control harvesting. I thought you needed to click on a person and then on a resource or maybe the other way around. However, after playing around with it, apparently you just mark trees for chopping or berries for harvest and you don't bother to tell who is supposed to do it and the workers sort it out amongst themselves. It also took me a while to figure out the "clock". But it probably doesn't make sense for them to waste any time on writing tutorials or manuals at this point.

It's definitely very cute, but there's virtually no game play at this point. I wasn't expecting the firepit and thought that was rather charming. The flame effect is very nice!

[hentzau]

Just goofing around with it, (that's what you use a day off of work for, right?) and I can see where it will be fun. Had a couple of crashes, and apparently there's no way to save it yet?

[ydejin]

Just goofing around with it, (that's what you use a day off of work for, right?) and I can see where it will be fun. Had a couple of crashes, and apparently there's no way to save it yet?

Correct, no way to save yet.

Here's their development road map with items listed in priority order. Saving is next up on tech and engine. Although they said that the most important item now is actually combing through bug and crash reports and squashing bugs that folks find in the Alpha.

[Madmarcus]

I'm greedy enough to say I'll take that key if you still have it Hentzau.

[Stuie]

I would absolutely love to check this out if there are any keys floating around.

[hentzau]

Madmarcus, I'll PM you the key when I can get back online. My laptop can't abide my folks wifi router.

[Madmarcus]

No worries.

[Sepiche]

Just thought I'd mention that this is starting to take shape finally.

I played a week ago or so and there was a good amount of content in. You can make a basic town, there are working masons, woodworkers, tailors, and footmen now in the game along with mining, goblin raiders, and basic combat. There's also a new alpha 8 that dropped today adding the blacksmith along with underground metals, party combat, and a daily quest that if completed will give you a new citizen.

They still have a good distance to go, but it's really starting to feel like a game. They are saying they are on track now to deliver significant patch each month for the next 5 months and that should put them within striking distance of beta.

[noxiousdog]

I really like the direction they are going with it. I spend an hour or two with it several times a week.

[ydejin]

I'm really looking forward to Alpha 9, which Tom (one of the developers) says is is focusing on:

• World content (make the world itself a more interesting place)
• The Archer

The rumor mill says that Alpha 9 will be adding Goblin camps to the surrounding area.

For me the most important thing the game was lacking when I played it last Autumn was a driving force pushing you to really develop. At that point it was SimCity minus the disasters. So making Goblins more of a threat would certainly help.

[noxiousdog]

I'm pretty sure they plan on lots of monsters.

[Sepiche]

Well this finally limped out of EA recently. It's got about 90% of what was promised in the kickstarter, but it's missing a few big stretch goals like other dimensions and playable dwarves. They did get coop multiplayer in however, and as far as I'm aware this is the only DF-like with coop play if that's your thing.

I played a bit last night, and it seems like they finally got a lot of the technical issues worked out, and the final UI is quite good at letting you build cool buildings, but the campaign is just a series of missions that popup and enemies that spawn and doesn't really have the limitless feeling of other games in the genre. Also some reports of poor performance when your town gets bigger, but I haven't got that far yet.

It's not a bad game, but it certainly feels less than what it could have been, and nothing approaching the level of Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress. The devs made a post that at least owned their mistakes and pointed to games of this nature being far more complicated than they thought starting out and the mistake of trying to write their own engine. Trying to write your own engine with a 15 man dev team in this day and age is pretty stupid quite honestly.

Similar with what happened to Clockwork Empires, but the final product here is much better than the buggy mess that CE eventually became.